


We'll Always Have Paris

by bunnoculars



Category: The Beatles
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-03
Updated: 2011-02-03
Packaged: 2019-03-12 22:49:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 22,741
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13557246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bunnoculars/pseuds/bunnoculars
Summary: John and Paul go to Paris. Part 1 is set during their trip over John's birthday in 1961, and Part 2 is set during their residency at Olympia Theatre in 1964. The last part would've been set during their impromptu visit in 1966, but I have no plans to write it.





	1. Part I

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written between 2009 and 2010.

**October 1961**

Life was a funny thing. Sometimes things would rush past and Paul wouldn’t have an idea or a care about what had happened that day, or that month; other times they rushed past, too, and he was left trying to cling to them when he could feel time slipping past, to keep the moment somehow, after it was gone and life blurred along forwards.

He always knew when a moment like that came, too—when his mum had died (there one instant and gone the next), when he’d met John for the first time, Hamburg…

And now Paris.

Paul reached up in the dark to finger his fringe, had caught himself doing that every so often for the past few days, as if to remind himself that it had indeed changed, that the quiff and the ducktail were no more. It made his forehead, his whole head feel weird; he knew that breaking in a new haircut was a bit like breaking in new shoes—it’d feel uncomfortable for a while, until one day you’d suddenly realize they were as worn and battered as your last pair.

Still, it felt so _different_ ; he brushed his fingers through his hair uselessly and sighed. The John-shaped lump stirred restlessly next to him.

“Go to sleep, yeah?” John’s voice, as sharp in the dark as if he’d spoken right into Paul’s ear. “All this bloody thinking’s keepin’ me up.”

“Can’t help it,” Paul said, then smirked. “Maybe if your bloody feet didn’t stink so much.”

“Oh, right,” John retorted, and then suddenly John’s foot pushed right in towards Paul’s face. Paul couldn’t control the mad giggle that bubbled up his throat as he grabbed at it, fighting it back.

They were topping ’n tailing it, as usual—only in theory as usual, though, Paul thought, because half the time they’d give in to the discomfort and lie together normally. Felt better somehow, more natural and so much easier for them to sleep.

“Y’know, your feet aren’t much to look at, either,” John said. “I feel like I’ve gone to bed with some old bint with bad breath and great big warts, ‘n all; mangled in the bombing, probably.”

“I haven’t got warts on me feet,” Paul said, working hard to feel insulted and suppressing his laugh with difficulty; he couldn’t stop the smile spreading across his face, knew it’d give him away anyway, didn’t matter John couldn’t see it so long as he could hear it. Which he always could.

Sure enough, John’s voice was teasing as he persisted, “That’s what your toes would be, if your feet were a face. That or little tentacles sprouting out. Jesus.”

“You’re sick, son,” Paul said, smile growing; he buried his face in his pillow, as if to hide it. “Dead sick, sick in the head.”

“Well, you can’t get enough of it, ’least,” John said, with an amused sort of knowing that brought a faint flush to Paul’s cheeks.

“Piss off,” he muttered into the rough cotton, embarrassed at the unbidden lilt to his muffled words.

He felt more than heard John’s cackle but let it go. There was a brief silence in which he figured John might have left off and returned to dozing. He let out a sigh and snuggled into the covers once more, willfully ignoring the fact that John had pulled them up too high on his end—seemed a bit weird that he’d rather sleep with cold feet. Paul hated having cold feet, maybe his were sensitive or something, but it was just the worst—

He nearly jumped out of his skin when he felt something trail lightly along the arch of his foot; for a second he thought he might have imagined it, but there it was again in the next instant—

Paul wriggled his foot frantically away, then let out a shrill hoot as suddenly John’s hand descended and tickled in earnest and his being dissolved into desperate, mindless hilarity. He tried in vain to twist away, to escape, but it was as if John had ten hands and fifty fingers, all intent on getting at his foot.

“No, John— _don’t_ —I can’t, I can’t….” he wheezed, not sure what laughter was his and what was John’s, kicking out madly—he thought John made a grab for his ankle—

“All right, son, all right!” John shouted, clamping his fingers down, voice tinged with an echo of Paul’s insanity as Paul’s leg strained and jerked in his grasp before the hysteria subsided and he finally relaxed. “Christ! No need to kick me fuckin’ head in.”

Paul merely gasped in the dark, trying to regain his breath; he felt as though the wind had been knocked out of him. Then John jerked on his ankle before letting it go.

“Right, just bloody get up here already,” he said.

Paul barely needed to hear the words, wondered blearily for a moment why they even bothered with topping ‘n tailing when they almost always ended up the other way. He twisted around, hugging his pillow to his chest, and burrowed upwards until quite abruptly he and John were face to face. He blinked into John’s eyes, too sharp and alive for this time of the night, morning, whichever.

“Hello,” John whispered, cracking a swift grin, sweet and mocking, there and gone in a flash. “That’s much better, much prettier—should’ve seen the last girl I was with, just now.”

Paul smiled totally against his own will, ducking his head; he felt John’s eyes follow the movement in the dark. “Never know when to quit, do you?” he mumbled.

“Not with you,” John said, voice lazily, gently cruel. “Joke’s never over where you’re concerned—the trick is to get you to stop laughin’, really.”

“Piss off,” Paul said again. “And go t’sleep, you’re the one who started this.”

He waited for John to say something more, knew he always loved to have the last word, but nothing came; the silence stretched, oddly jarring to Paul’s ears. He closed his eyes until he felt John’s gaze relent as well, then until a little while later, when he thought maybe he could open them again safely.

He studied John’s face. The pale, silvery moonlight filtering in through the curtains cast his features in a ghostly bluish pallor, shadowy along the sharp, long line of his nose and the dark curl of his eyelashes against his cheek. The furrow in his brow and the harsh line of his mouth told Paul that he hadn’t quite drifted off yet—John looked for all the world as quiet and serene as a bloody angel when he slept, he knew that from the rare time he’d caught him having a kip in the back of the Indra.

He felt his hand returning to his hair and buried his fist under his pillow, a vague, bony lump under his cheek.

 

_“Felt like my feet were flapping about,” John muttered, throwing a sideways glance at Paul, eyes obscured by his thick glasses. His mouth was set in frustration as in vain he tried to poke the thread through his needle._

_Paul looked up from his own even stitches. “I know, John.”_

_He wasn’t sure why John was so bothered by the trousers; they’d had the same exchange in the street and a few times up here in the room as well. It was a bit strange, really—they’d been uncomfortable and drafty, sure, but nobody they knew had seen them dressed like that; no big deal, really. He rather thought, anyway, that seeing John struggle with needlework (woman’s work, he’d scoff) was stranger. Unnatural._

_“Let’s have a go then,” he said eventually, taking pity on him; he reached for the needle and John relinquished it immediately, looking embarrassed, their fingers meeting as he fumbled to grasp it._

_Paul’s tongue poked through his lips unconsciously as he held the needle up close, then wet the frayed thread tip._

_“They’ll make good enough drainies, anyroad,” Paul murmured, concentrating, mostly for conversation’s sake._

_John made a noncommittal noise in his throat; so much for that. Paul succeeded in threading the needle and passed it back to him, mildly surprised there was no comment fired at him—“What a lovely little housewife,” or, “I could set you up with Mimi’s sewing circle, if you like.”_

_They sewed in silence for a while, Paul with efficient, practiced ease, John with grimaces and muttered oaths as he pricked his fingers and bent so that his nose was all but pressed to the fabric. Paul was almost done with his first pant leg when he cast a sidelong glance at John’s work, took in with surprise the close, even stitches._

_“Were a bit queer, though, weren’t they?” John said at length, catching his eye. His tone was studiously casual._

_Paul forced a laugh; it came less easily to him than he’d have thought. “Yeah—yeah, they were a bit.”_

 

Paul stared into John’s face absently. It was with a jolt that he realized that one eye had cracked open and was regarding him, shrewd and sharp as ever despite his supposed sleepiness.

“There you go again,” John muttered, somewhat crankily. “What?”

“It’s been a good holiday, hasn’t it,” Paul heard himself say.

John snorted, squinting at him and then rolling his eyes at something he saw there. “Yeah, Macca, just grand—it’d be even better if you’d let me sleep.”

Paul scowled at him and turned over. He couldn’t see John anymore but he could still feel him behind him, the warmth of his body half an inch from his own, could feel those eyes burning into the back of his neck. He pressed his cheek against the coolness of his pillow, hugging his edge of the blankets to him and squeezing his eyes shut, so tightly it was painful.

 

_“I saw ‘er first,” Paul hissed insistently at John as their waitress wended slowly around towards their table again. She’d been back to fill their coffees up like clockwork until Paul thought he was developing a twitch, jittery from the caffeine._

_Or maybe just jittery from being in a café in bloody Paris with the most gorgeous bloody waitress he’d ever seen—as John had said, “They don’t make ‘em like that in England.” Carefully styled chestnut hair (so she wasn’t a blonde—normally that would’ve counted against a bird), pretty face, and a great bust. A really great bust._

_As John had said, “It’s ‘er tits, son. Her face isn’t anything great—you’d know it, too, if you ever looked above her shoulders.”_

_Which was all the more reason why John had no right, he’d seen her first, he appreciated her, John couldn’t just swoop in and take her._

 

“Well what is it, then?” John said sharply from behind him.

“Never mind,” Paul muttered, not opening his eyes, willing sleep to claim him from nowhere.

Sleep was the last possible thing at the moment, though, now that John had latched on. “Mooning over that girl you met in that café the other day, eh?”

Paul’s eyes flew open in spite of him and a frisson of surprise rippled through him. The image of the waitress’s face rose blurrily in his mind’s eye as he stared ahead blankly, forming and dissipating as quickly and completely as a wisp of smoke.

“The arty bird with that bloke friend of hers,” John clarified, cuttingly. “S’pose you liked the way she said Paul—Pol, Pole.” His affected French accent became more exaggerated with each pass.

Paul let out a quiet, relieved breath and closed his eyes again.

 

_“In real life it’s not always the early worm who catches the bird, son,” John intoned now._

_“Bird who catches the worm, y’daft git.”_

_“Whichever,” John said dismissively, waggling his eyebrows, “’s the bird which gets caught in this case, anyroad.”_

_“Go catch your own bird,” Paul said irritably, pushing John’s hand away when he reached over to slap his cheek._

_John laughed; it was something of a mix between derision and real humor. “This isn’t Hamburg, Paul—can’t just go asking door to door, can I?—won’t someone shag this man!”_

_“Probably could,” Paul said, feeling a smile tug at the corners up his mouth. “We’re in Paris. French birds, ‘n all that…”_

_He drifted off as the waitress flitted into his line of vision again, taking the order of an artsy couple before pouring more tea for the lecherous old man sitting in the corner._

 

“Not her then after all,” John mused, a cruel edge to his voice. “Someone else.”

Paul tensed and made an impatient noise in his throat. “Just leave it, John, yeah?”

 

_“Besides, there’re other waitresses ‘ere,” Paul pointed out, roused by the sight of theirs making her way closer still._

_“Eh, where?”_

_Paul looked around, saw another woman in uniform a few tables up. He nodded in her direction, “Over there.”_

_“Cor, looks a right slag, that one,” John said disgustedly, throwing back his coffee like it was a shot of whiskey. He grimaced; Paul guessed that it had gone lukewarm in the fairly short interim between when she got to them last and now—he’d downed his in long, steady sips himself, so that he’d be ready for a refill when the time came._

_“Nah, she looks good enough from the back,” Paul protested fairly, giving her a cursory once-over._

_“That’s all you know of it, wait til she turns ‘round,” John said darkly. He paused and looked in Paul’s direction—Paul thought he might’ve been looking over his shoulder, where their, his, waitress had gone to pour a refill for another insistent young man. Then with a jolt he realized that John was actually looking at him, intent eyes searching his face. Paul met his gaze, hoped he held up to the scrutiny, couldn’t make out a thing himself—John’s expression had gone guarded and closed._

 

“Pining for Dot, are you?” John pressed sneeringly. “Ready to run back into her arms?”

Paul didn’t know how he was always able to get at him like this, toying with him, mocking him—sometimes he wished John would just have it out with him the old-fashioned way when he got into one of these moods, haul off and punch him, maybe, or shout at him, but not this, not this circling and slashing.

“John,” he said, and he knew it was enough for John to understand—shut your mouth, thank you. Was never enough for him to listen, though.

 

_“Tell you what,” John said slowly, as if he was being generous with him, “We’ll ‘ave to share her.”_

_Paul had a sudden stark image of them with a bird between them, naked. He bit down on his lip, hard, tried to ignore the strange buzzing that had entered his head and the heat that suffused his whole body, blood rising up in his cheeks._

_“I, that’s…” he stammered, heart suddenly hammering in his chest, staring unseeingly at John’s face. “John…”_

_“Fuck, she’s comin’,” John muttered distractedly. “Quick, drop somethin’—”_

_“I—what—?” His head was still in a daze at John’s suggestion, at what could happen—_

 

“And here was me, draggin’ you away to Paris, ’n all,” John said, mocking in his exaggerated guilt. “Thank God we never made it to Spain!”

 

_“More coffee, yes?”_

_He turned at the low, heavily accented voice and found the waitress standing in front of their little table. Somehow it was bizarre to see her right there, finally, didn’t know why that should be._

_Out of the corner of his eye he could make out John watching him still. Oh. Oh—_

_Blindly, thoughtlessly he flailed out and knocked over the milk jug, spilling it all over his lap and smashing the porcelain as it rolled off the edge and onto the floor._

_In the next instant the waitress had cried out and had leaned down to pat off his lap with a napkin, rubbing liberally and murmuring a string of apologies in French and broken English. It took him a while to realize why John had told him to drop something, longer than it should’ve; her cleavage caught his eye, distracting him, even as he was sure John was ogling her from the back where her short skirt would’ve drawn up._

_Then, as she moved her arm, he caught a glimpse of the shadow of hair underneath._

_His mind flashed bizarrely to John, John who had armpit hair, who was a bloke, to him and her and John together. He took an unsteady breath and looked down her dress front again. Tried to focus on the way she was touching him now, so obviously. Couldn’t._

_Tried to picture her naked, couldn’t—and then suddenly the image in his head narrowed to just him and John—_

_“I’ve got to take a piss,” he said suddenly, and it was the truth, he realized belatedly—all that coffee had finally gotten to him. “Excuse me, excusez, excusez-moi…”_

 

He heard John shift behind him, pictured him propping up his head on his arm, elbow digging into his pillow as he stared down his nose at Paul. He could almost feel the exact point on his cheek where John’s gaze was trained, a prickling, niggling sensation on his skin.

“Who knew, you’d left your heart back in Liverpool.”

Irritation, abstracted and removed, rose up in Paul. “John, it’s not—”

“Don’t worry though, Paulie,” John pressed on heedlessly, “It’ll be waiting for you when you get back; might’ve gone a bit funny with the rain and shit.”

“I’m not bloody pinin’, all right?” Paul snapped finally, loud and firm. He sensed John still behind him.

 

_“I can’t believe you passed ‘er up,” John said once they were safely on the street again, “’n after all that.”_

_Paul didn’t answer; he felt nauseated from too much caffeine and too little food. His head was on strange, he wasn’t thinking straight right now._

_There was a protracted silence between them, vaguely dark and electrifying to Paul._

_“About—” John broke off as abruptly as he started, and Paul could feel his eyes desperately trying to pin him down. He needed to keep moving, to keep from that; he didn’t stop, kept walking. “It was a fucking joke, Paul. It wasn’t—I didn’t—”_

 

“Who is it, then?” John asked. Not what is it. Who is it, who is it—it echoed through Paul’s head.

 

_Paul glanced over at him, couldn’t help himself, but once he had, it took all the strength he had to look away again. He heard himself give a false laugh that sounded high and tinny in the busy little street. “No, I, it wasn’t—I know—” He took a deep, quick breath, a jangle of nervous energy. “The waitress had fuckin’ hairy armpits, is all.”_

_And when the tension leaked and fizzled between them and John let out a crow of constrained, crazed, relieved laughter, badgering him about it in the next moment, Paul felt a reluctant, pained sort of relief himself. In a few seconds they had fallen back into their old back-and-forth, their old roles._

 

Who is it?

 

Paul stood in front of the tiny mirror, gawking at the face that looked at him in the mirror. He scratched his nose; so did the boy in the mirror. His hand went up to his hair; so did the boy’s in the mirror.

“What’re you doin’ in here?”

Paul didn’t turn as John squeezed himself into Jurgen’s tiny bathroom, the door snicking closed behind, nodding absently at his reflection as he continued to stare.

“Jus’ doin’ a damage assessment,” he said, trying for humor.

“It’s no use, gawping at yourself,” John said briskly, leaning back against the wall behind him and taking a drag of his stubby ciggy. Their eyes met. “S’not like it’s goin’ to grow back if you look at it long enough.”

“I know, I know, it’s just…” Paul said vaguely. He leaned in closer, then tilted his head back, trying to get a different angle, something to erase his peculiar sense of loss.

“Eh?”

Paul shifted uncomfortable, self-consciously. “Just…I look a bit _soft_ , don’t y’think?”

“Not a’tall,” John drawled, blowing smoke through his nostrils. It wasn’t exactly reassuring, Paul thought. John with his ducktail and quiff still in place, with both his feet still firmly planted in the past.

He made a disbelieving noise in his throat and frowned at his reflection, combing his fingers roughly through his hair, not sure if he was trying to iron his fringe out or brush it aside. Just something so he didn’t feel, look so _daft_ —

“’ere,” John said around his cigarette, suddenly right behind him, and then his hand reached up and pushed Paul’s out of the way impatiently; Paul’s fingers burned at the contact but he let his hands rest on the edge of the sink, porcelain cool to the touch. Then his cheeks burned, and the rest of his body too, as John’s fingers carded gently through his fringe, roughened tips whispering across his forehead. A sigh escaped him at the contact, and something tight in his chest eased.

The silence between them was soft and warm and supple; their eyes met evenly in the mirror and then John brushed through one more time before he lifted away and stepped back, surveying his work; Paul couldn’t see the difference but he felt it. He turned to face him, feeling oddly bereft at the distance between them.

“Better?” John prodded gently, exhaling a cloud of smoke that lingered in the air between them and lifting his chin.

“Fine, yeah,” Paul said, coughing in embarrassment when his voice came out all hoarse and wrong.

John grinned at him then, and under the humor there was something teasing, strangely intimate as he went on, “Good—if you look soft then I haven’t got a bloody chance.”

Paul forced a slight chuckle and ducked his head, rubbing at the back of his neck.

“Well, I’m goin’ to—” John mimed a snipping motion and jerked his head towards the door, “Y’comin’?”

Paul felt the soft smile curve his mouth of its own accord. “’Course, John.”

 

“Why did you bring me along?” Paul asked into the darkness, finally voicing the one thing that had been nagging at him all along.

“Well, I’d have a right time of it by meself,” John said drily, too quickly and too flippantly.

Paul bit his lip to keep from sighing, to keep from giving up at that, he didn’t know. “No, I mean…why _me_?”

John loomed in towards him, pulling a stupid face Paul could just see to match his stupid voice, “Because you’re my very bestest mate in the whole world, Paul.”

Paul reached back blindly, disgustedly, to shove him back; his arm hit something warm and solid and then there was a soft thump as John fell back on the mattress once more. “Seriously, John.”

“Seriously, Paul,” John mimicked nastily, shrilly; there was a minute before he sighed nasally and answered normally, sharpened in annoyance as if he were dealing with a daft kid, “God, I don’t know. Cyn was busy with school, Stu crossed me mind, but…”

Paul didn’t answer, couldn’t, felt like there were daggers in his throat as the “but” lingered between them, drifting lazy, caustic.

And of course John was on to him in a second, could always smell blood quicker than anyone.

“Aw, now he’s hurt,” he sneered cloyingly. Then he dropped the tone and it was just John’s voice, but that hurt too, was worse, “You want to grow up a bit, son—grow a pair yeah?” At Paul’s continued, pained silence, he sighed explosively, reached out and pushed at his shoulder, no real strength behind it as Paul swayed slightly with the movement. “Christ, Paul, you’re such a fuckin’ _girl_ sometimes. Doesn’t matter you’ve fucked ‘er if she finds out you fancied her friend first.”

“Fuck off,” Paul snarled, managing to keep the quaver trapped in his throat somewhere. He yanked at his half of the blankets and curled up as far as he could towards the edge of the bed, trying in vain to escape John’s warmth, John’s presence behind him. He shut his eyes, angry red spots dancing across his darkened vision, wishing he could’ve listened to John on the off, just gone to sleep and stopped thinking. Fuckin’ hell, couldn’t stop even now.

There was a long, protracted silence between them. Paul was determined not to break it; John shifted behind him again, hadn’t stopped staring at him.

John sighed once more, sharply. “Paul, you don’t have to be so…” he trailed off, as if he couldn’t find the right word to describe how Paul was being. “Take a fuckin’ joke, for once.”

Paul didn’t move, kept himself perfectly still.

_The trick is to get you to stop laughin’, really._

Silence again, tense.

“Look, I just picked you, okay?” John said finally, the barest lilt of vulnerability in his voice behind all the aggression, defensiveness, Paul saw now; Paul wondered if he imagined it for a second, but was sure he hadn’t as John went on, “I didn’t have a great bloody reason for it—just wanted you to come. Just seemed…right. I don’t…Christ! Why are you so fucking—”

Silence and tension. It was as loud and palpable in Paul’s ears as John’s voice had been a moment ago.

John’s voice. “Paul.”

Paul waited, listening hard to the silence, which had become a thing between them, thick and taut and rising up into something.

Then he felt a sharp thrill through his nerves as a hand came down on his hip.

“Paul, come here,” John said, voice naked in the dark. Paul shivered, obeyed the hand pulling him back before he could think to resist, refuse, and then shuddered from head to toe as the full length of their bodies met in the dark, and then everything zoomed from cold to burning as he realized John was hard against him, pressed to the base of his spine. His gasp was harsh, loud as he gripped at the blanket uselessly.

John expelled a shaky breath, warm against the back of his neck, before he carefully tucked his face against Paul’s skin, nose pressing briefly through his hair. Paul could feel his lips just barely grazing him, wet and hot and sending sparks showering dangerously through Paul’s system.

He couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t—

_John’s smile, his voice, his eyes; John’s eyes meeting his in the mirror, the weight of that gaze on him, the feel of John’s fingers brushing through his hair and the warmth of his body close so close behind him._

Paul arched back against him. John let out a strangled moan, a cool glint of teeth pressed against of his neck as the hand on his hip clamped down painfully. Paul’s eyes slipped shut, heavy and dark as John pressed forward against him, agonizing slowly, fully, and then they were moving together, falling into a rhythm that got harder and faster and so fucking good. Paul was painfully hard before he knew what was happening, his body thrumming, bursts of arousal exploding everywhere John touched him.

“Jesus,” he groaned, half into the pillow; his mouth was slack and wet and the word slipped off his tongue formlessly. “John... ”

“Oh fuck,” John muttered feverishly into his neck, hips jerking into him hard. Then his hand clawed up into Paul’s shirt, calloused fingers stroking wide over his bare skin, burning into him. Unbidden a keening sound rose up through him and past his lips at the feel of it; distantly he felt a flush of embarrassment at the noise but was too far gone. He shoved himself back against John, pleasure ripping through him when John was there to meet him. The world had narrowed to him and John, their little bed, the rock of their hips, the electric brush of John’s lips against his neck, the heat of his chest pressed tight to his back, and his erection, hard against his arse, and Paul’s own need, rising up sharp and blazing—

Paul barely realized that his hand had groped up his shirt to tug at John’s, but then John breathed out a ragged groan and he was slipping his hand down Paul’s stomach to palm his dick through the thin cotton of his pants and a flare burst raw in his nerves as his hips leapt forward.

“Oh fuck oh Christ _John_ —”

He was a mess, torn between John on either side, forward into his hand or back into his dick, it was too good, too fucking good, he was vaguely aware that he was moaning—

And then John had gotten up on an elbow and suddenly his face was bent over his, eyes shining dark with fascination, demanding as they sought out his and held them even as his hips pressed tight to Paul’s and his hand stroking him roughly, relentlessly.

“Wanted this,” John said, words half spoken and jagged with his breathing. “Wanted to fuck you, Paul.”

“John, can’t, I can’t…” Paul panted up at him, something intense and unnamable ripping through him. He reached up blindly, fingers pushing through John’s sweaty hair where it clung to his forehead before his hand curled around his head and brought his mouth down to his.

John let out a loud gravelly moan and fell into the kiss with a desperation that brought it from a formless crush of their lips to something deep and messy and open-mouthed in a few seconds as he shoved his tongue into Paul’s mouth and stroked it over his own. It felt so right, John’s mouth on his own, their kiss, more right than anything Paul had felt in his whole life, too much too much too much—

Paul’s orgasm crashed over him, a great white wave that swept him along even as he cried out against John’s lips and then John’s hips had snapped into his body once, twice more before he bit down on Paul’s bottom lip, drawing blood, and came hard against him.

When Paul finally came ‘round, he found John still gazing down at him; the first thing he could make out were his eyes, naked and unguarded still as they peered into his own. In that instant John didn’t look like the formidable teddy boy he’d worshipped all these years, already a man, the one who got the girls and swore like a sailor and didn’t give a fuck what anyone thought; he looked like a boy Paul’s own age. He couldn’t say why it struck him so powerfully in that moment, could feel his world tilt imperceptibly.

Then John’s fingers danced along his face and his thumb pressed onto his bottom lip, stroking across it gently. Paul felt a shiver of pain, too late and lazy; his limbs felt as if they were made of butter, his mind of cotton fluff and sunlight.

“Cor, you’re bleeding,” John said in a whisper, a grin curving his lips as his hand lifted away. “Sorry about that.”

Paul brought his own hand to his mouth, felt to where the pain was and then held his finger close up for inspection. Sure enough, there was the tiny glistening of blood on the pad. He looked at it numbly for a minute before wiping his finger on the blanket.

A shift to get more comfortable brought the sticky mess in his pants sharply to mind. He made a disgusted face and wriggled out of them, had never had a sense of modesty where John was concerned, seemed a bit ridiculous to develop one now, in any case. John watched him with lazy interest before he followed suit; the bed was a rustle of movement as pants were thrown aside and shirts were shrugged out of as well. Paul turned and snuggled back down, spent and drowsy as he faced John.

There was silence between them once more, sleepy and peaceful this time as they looked at each other through half-closed eyes.

“What d’you s’pose the rest’ll think when we get back?” Paul asked.

“That we’ve gone barmy on the hols, probably,” John answered promptly.

Paul kicked him under the sheets, mouth twisting up into a smile totally of its own accord. “Well, we have, haven’t we?”

“Speak for yourself, love,” John whispered, grinning with a shadow of tired glee. “I’ve always been.”

“S’pose that’s true, isn’t it?” he assented, smile widening before it faded as he mulled it over. “Still, the haircut, and, and…”

“They’re not on our level, son,” John said, and for all the lightness of his tone Paul could tell that he was in deadly earnest. “They’ve never understood.”

The open admission of the intimacy between them spread a warm, elated feeling through him and the grin was back, horrible and shit-eating and he didn’t care. He’d known for himself right from the start that John was different, was the best mate or whatever he was that he’d ever meet, but with John there was Cyn and Stu and Paul had to try to squeeze in there somewhere between them, wasn’t sure if there was enough room for him all the time. He’d scrabbled hard for John’s attention over the years. John condescended to spend lunch with him and George and he’d skive off every day to sit around and take his shit; there was a shit job that needed doing in the band and Paul was his man; John asked him to hitch hike to Spain with him and Paul had dropped everything to go with him.

So to hear John say that…

Yeah.

“So it’s just the two of us then,” Paul said.

“Wouldn’t have it any other way.”

And then he realized that John was looking at him the same way, was a bit harder to tell with him, but he could just tell. He could just tell.


	2. Part II

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lyrics Cited:
> 
> 1\. "There! I've Said It Again". Red Evans and David Mann. _There! I've Said it Again_. Epic, 1963.  
>  2\. "I Want to Hold Your Hand." Lennon/McCartney. _I Want to Hold Your Hand_. EMI, 1963.  
>  3\. "I Should Have Known Better". Lennon/MCCartney. _A Hard Day's Night_. EMI, 1964.  
>  4\. "Bob Dylan's Dream." Bob Dylan. _The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan_. Columbia Records, 1963.

Silence fell as the needle of the record player slipped to the end and the last few seconds of grainy nothingness elapsed, a dull shock to John’s ears as the raspy refrain of Bob Dylan’s voice continued to echo around his head. No one spoke; none of them could speak too soon after hearing that, didn’t matter if they’d listened to it a hundred bloody times already (and they had, maybe a thousand). It was still Bob Dylan.

Paul had discovered and gotten the album off a French disc jockey a few days into their stay here—“I keep ‘earing stuff about this Dylan bloke, let’s give it a go”—and it had been love at first sight, at first listen, whichever. Because John had never heard anything like it before. Here was a man had a singing voice like a parched frog, but didn’t give a fuck because he had something to _say_. So much to fucking say that John didn’t give a fuck about his voice, either, thought it added to the appeal even, made it more real somehow. He didn’t know, just that if someone with a voice like that was willing to sing—if singing became more about _words_ …

“Bob fucking Dylan,” he said to no one in particular, hardly aware he’d broken the quiet enveloping them.

He felt Paul smile somewhere to the left of where he was slouched back in the squashy armchair, so deep he knew he’d get a crick in his neck come morning, his chin resting on his chest and his legs stretched out bonelessly in front of him.

“He’s fucking real, man,” George said in the next moment, and his tone was charged with something suppressed, surging. His eyes had a glint to them John understood but couldn’t credit, exactly.

“Have to be, with a voice like that,” John replied idly, a flat echo of his thoughts.

Paul laughed, the follow up to that unseen smile that John had anticipated; he felt an instant, vague trill of satisfaction at the sound.

George scowled. “But he’s really something, y’know.”

“Didn’t say he wasn’t, son,” John retorted evenly. And he hadn’t; he’d meant only what he’d said, without reading anything else into it, as George had done.

“But I mean, it’s not just I love you and you love me, and all that rubbish,” George persisted unheedingly. “This shit actually _means_ something.”

He heard a sigh, immediately attributed it to Paul, knew from the way the breath caught slightly before it released. And sure enough, Paul’s voice, high with an inflection of annoyance, “But it doesn’t just come down to that, George, that’s not—”

“You know what I mean,” George interjected quickly, cutting him short and brushing him off, and there was another Paul sigh, more of a huff, as he returned to his argument, “But it _does_ , y’know, look, he’s not…He’s talkin’ about colored people and war and…and…”

“I think love means something,” Ringo said, reasonable, conciliatory before there was even a hint of real conflict. Good old Rings.

“Such a cynic, our Ringo,” John intoned loudly, flatly, voice a booming mockery of condemnation. He was rewarded again by the warmth of Paul’s laughter, mingled with Ringo’s. As the sound faded he felt a smile slowly curve his own mouth, pressing his chin into his chest further as it rose and fell with steady breath.

A grin had tugged at the mutinous corners of George’s lips but he suppressed it irritably, waiting with impatience for the rest of them to settle down again.

“Take World War III Blues, for one,” George pressed, rallying back to his cause with a grim sort of determination that came off as a fucking drag to John, but nonetheless he felt a slight stir of interest.

“Yeah?”

George turned to him; it was hard to tell if he was glaring at him or not as he eyed him from under his great dark brows. He hesitated and then stumbled into speech as John made an impatient noise, “Well, look, don’t you see it’s…it’s like…”

“Spit it out, will you?”

“Well, it’s _us_ ,” George said in a rush at his prodding, eyes gleaming feverishly. “That’s us, we’re all walking around in this fuckin’ wasteland, and it’s just _us_ , and there’s no one—”

His words spoke to the frenzied truth of things; it appealed to John immediately, but Paul shifted in annoyance, a crisp rustle of clothes. “That’s…”

George ignored him, if he even heard him. “This whole thing is the fuckin’ dream, y’see? And we’re all in—”

“And I’ll let you be in my dream if I can be in yours, and we’re all in each others’ dreams, and all that,” Paul finished in a burst, an edge to his words. John straightened up finally so he could crane around to have a look at him, arranged like a schoolgirl on the sofa next to Ringo; took in the furrowed brow and the vague, frustrated turn of his head, just as he had pictured. “Except that doesn’t...it’s not…”

George snorted. “Well isn’t it, though?”

John felt the fine edge of tension in the air, could sense Paul’s unsettled aggravation as the two of them stared at each other, felt a shoot of it through his own nerves. He supposed it was a byproduct of having been stuck with him for such a long time, so _much_ time ( _that it was a byproduct of them being Johnandpaul_ ), that he was so attune to Paul’s moods, but whenever Paul was in a sulk it niggled at him, worked its way under his skin, until it drove him slowly mad.

“I wouldn’t let you be in my dream,” he said, trying for humor but coming up with an edge, “I’d leave you to rot with all the fans, all the fuckin’ nutters.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Ringo countered, harmless and chummy, oblivious to George’s scowl, “I’d let you be in mine.”

“’s daft, you lot,” George said furiously, brow contracting heavily. “I’m not having a laugh ‘ere, I’m not jokin’.”

When a joke went wrong John always reckoned it best to see it through, anyroad. “I’m not either, I see enough of your ugly face when I’m awake.”

“Fuck off,” George snarled, not taking it too well in any case. 

There was a slightly stunned silence, before Paul interceded, voice soft, firm, as if he were trying to convince Julian there were no monsters under his bed, “Look, George, it’s just not the same, I can see what you’re getting at but it’s…” he trailed off as if he was looking for the right way to put the matter to bed; John hung on himself, waiting to see if Paul’s words would somehow bend to match the ones lurking in his own head, at the back of his throat. Paul’s mouth set in finality . “It’s just not the same.”

Wasn’t what he’d meant at all, that; was just like Paul to step in for him like that without knowing…

“I’m not saying—” he began without thinking, then broke off as Paul’s eyes flitted to his and he experienced an inexplicable stab of uncertainty. He could feel George’s impatient gaze on them, waiting for them to finish with this latest staring contest. For John to finish the sentence, perhaps.

George vented with frustrated sigh in the next second. “Right, well…it’s still fucking real, y’know. He’s talkin’ about all this shit that’s happening to us, to the world…”

“It’s because he’s American, though, so he can sing ‘bout American things,” Ringo piped up unexpectedly. Paul glanced at him, startled out of their silent exchange; John followed him with his gaze but then gave up and followed suit. Ringo blinked a bit at the sudden attention. “Colored people ‘n all that, like y’said. But we can’t be American because we’re British, y’know.”

“God save the queen,” John muttered and Ringo flashed a grin at him as he dug in his pocket for a cigarette, coming up with one for him and one for Paul when he tapped him on the shoulder expectantly.

“Cheers, Ritch,” Paul murmured, smiling as he bent close and Ringo obligingly lit the pair of them up. John’s eyes lingered on him as he pursed his lips around the cigarette and then exhaled a thin stream of smoke, wondered lazily why they hadn’t thought to use him in one of those sexy cigarette adverts yet, with a mouth like that.

“Fine.” George’s voice was dogged, a glower to match the expression that had settled onto his face at their seeming indifference. “But…Fine. Just stick to writing ‘She Loves You’ then.”

John felt a flare of anger in his belly he could scarcely credit, sudden and sharp as a broken bottle, properly awake now for the first time.

“What was that, George?” he said loudly. “You’ll want to speak up, son.”

George’s face tightened but he stood his ground. “You ‘eard me.”

Abruptly silence fell amongst the four of them again, but this time it was screeching, jarring, sudden tension clawing at them, where it had been sleepy, a soft shadow of Bob Dylan’s voice. John could hear the dull thudding of his heart, a strange buzzing in his ears. A minute ago he’d been ready for a kip; now his jaw had clenched and his hands were curling into fists.

He’d probably been working up to that the whole time, the little cunt, John thought. Needed to slip it in through the back door so maybe he wouldn’t get his head kicked in for his trouble.

“I’m feelin’ a bit tired, John,” Paul said significantly into the silence. John swung around to look at him, hadn’t thought to check his reaction against his own—what he’d felt was for _both_ of them, it was for—

It was like another kick in the gut to see him sitting there smoking calmly, eyes widening at him, to see him appeal to Ringo, “Rings?”

“Eh?” Ringo muttered in surprise at being addressed, then, cottoning on, hastened to agree, “Oh, yeah, yes. Um, yeah, dead knackered…”

 _Better keep Johnny from going off his head again, there_. Fuck that, fuck Paul.

“Any time you feel like contributing to the songwriting, Georgie boy,” he pressed on, ignoring them, voice taut and rising as he stared George down. He wanted to stand up, was too angry over such a minor thing, forced himself to stay seated, keep his self-control. “Any time you feel like gettin’ us to fuckin’ number one yourself.”

George’s whole form seemed to be compressed into a scrawny, angular rectangle as he opened his mouth.

“I, I didn’t…”

John felt a tug on his wrist and realized with a start that Paul had actually fucking crossed the room and was pulling at him, bending down over him. Paul’s eyes were dark and firm and oddly closed as they met his.

“John, come on, let’s…”

“ _What_ , Paul? Need to be tucked in or something?”

His words belied his actions; he was getting to his feet, and then he was allowing himself to be led away, ushered from the room as the conversation stuttered to a halt and then they were in the peace of their suite, door shut behind them and the rest of the world cut off before John quite knew what had happened.

He opened his mouth as if to speak, then realized he had nothing to say and shut it again before Paul caught sight of him gaping like a bloody fish. Not that Paul was there to have a look; he had left him at the door and nipped into the bathroom. John could hear him pottering about in there, wasn’t quite sure what he was up to; if it’d been Cyn, he’d have known she was removing her makeup and applying that cream to her face—God only knew what it was for, moisturizing her skin or smoothing her complexion or some such thing. He amused himself for a minute imagining Paul smearing that shit over his cheeks before he scoffed. No need for that—had perfect skin, the bastard.

It struck him as odd that he didn’t know what Paul did to get ready for bed, that somehow in spite of everything they didn’t have that level of intimacy. Odd that he knew Cyn’s routine but didn’t know Paul’s.

Then it struck him that that occurring to him should’ve seemed odd.

John crossed the room and sat down on his bed after a moment of restless indecision.

He felt wired and angry still, wasn’t quite sure why. George had touched a nerve that had been buried uneasily under the money that was coming in and the records being cut, from their precarious perch at the top of the chart. He couldn’t breathe for running to keep it up, keep it going, from the fear of slipping back down into the nothingness that stretched endlessly at their backs. It was still fucking there, though, still fucking got at him, would keep doing so, unless someday it all got to be too much and he stopped being John Lennon.

Because that’s what it was, wasn’t it? The fucking suits and the bowing and the whole fucking game they’d been playing to get here, and now…now maybe their music as well.

None of it was fuckin’ him, most of it hadn’t been him, ever, but the music—well, that had changed the moment Bob Dylan had croaked out at him about dying children and segregated water fountains and life and dreams.

A flash of movement caught his eye and he realized that Paul had joined him again, irritatingly fresh-faced at first glance as he ambled over. He kept silent as Paul sat down on the bed opposite his, making no move to get undressed. His knees were pressed together girlishly, hands clasped loosely in his lap. He seemed to be squinting at John’s left foot. Had a habit of staring off into space, Paul.

“Dylan really is something,” Paul ventured finally.

“Yeah,” John said noncommittally.

“Bob Dylan.”

“ _Yes_ , Paul,” John said testily; part of him wanted to smile at the approximate echo, the Paul-echo, of his earlier sentiments. Bob fucking Dylan.

“Sorry,” Paul said, starting and shifting his gaze to John’s briefly, as if he hadn’t realized he’d been drifting. The smile surged back, suppressed again. “I just…It’s so fuckin’ different, y’know? There’s Elvis, an’ then there’s him, _this_.”

“Bit general,” John said, but he felt what Paul meant, knew he wasn’t overlooking the bands they’d worshipped all throughout their childhood; he was drawing the line, between then and now. He tested it out on his tongue, “Elvis and Bob Dylan.”

Paul nodded, gravity betrayed by the twitch at the corner of his lips, and John was seized by the sudden desire to tease the full smile out of him.

“The king and, and…”

“The toad,” John cut in, and sure enough Paul giggled and reached ineffectually to push at him; he was too far away, the tips of his fingers just grazing the front of his shirt.

“Oh, come on, John,” he protested helplessly.

“No, for real,” John insisted through his own smile, unable to bite it back this time. He cleared his throat. “I don’t mean it as something bad, it’s just a fact. ‘s what makes ‘im real.”

“Yeah, guess he’s not too pretty about it, is he?” Paul agreed. “I mean, Blowin’ in the Wind, A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall…”

John resisted the urge to snigger as Paul pronounced the names in his best (and worst) approximation of American twang. “Great shit,” he settled for.

Paul nodded. A genial pause elapsed between them, but it wasn’t so much a pause, really, as John stared evenly into Paul’s eyes and he felt the moment expand between them, felt the words that hung in the back of both their mouths. Just a different mode of communication for them.

“And then there’s _us_ ,” Paul said, voicing it at last, ridiculously solemn. Fittingly so.

The moptops. The Fabs. The Cute One and the Quiet One and the Cuddly One and the Smart One.

The Beatles.

Well, toads eat beetles, John thought hazily. How fitting, yet again. Sudden bitterness, a trace of the anger that had flared up at George, shot through him. Paul was watching him closely, he realized.

“George, he—” Paul broke off as suddenly as he’d started, eyeing him almost anxiously. John looked away, fumbling in his pocket for a ciggie and then a light, feeling a flash of irritation as the subject was raised openly. He could feel Paul’s look pressing on him and sensed him fidgeting with his sleeve. “About what he said back there…”

“Fucking full of shit, is George,” John interjected stridently, wondering why he bothered to hope Paul would let it go. Didn’t know why he hoped things to go one way or the other when conversing with Paul, because he always knew enough how things would turn out.

And there was another fidget, fleeting in the corner of his eye, right on schedule. Paul’s voice was sincere but oddly repressed as he continued, “’e was talkin’ about both of us, John. He wasn’t….”

“I _know_ that, Paul.” Christ, what he’d felt was for both of them, wasn’t it obvious? Lennon/McCartney and all that. He hadn’t just felt it for himself, he’d been defending…but then, Paul could be startlingly thick sometimes about him, about…

There was a flat, strained pause that seemed all the longer for John’s impatience. He took quick, deep drag of his cigarette and smoke burned through his lungs.

“ _Have_ you thought of anythin’ new, lately?” Paul asked finally.

But then the way Paul knew him, just where to prod, was uncanny. 

Something jagged pierced through him.

“I’m not a bloody factory,” he said, the thing that had stung through him cutting into his voice, too sharp and abrasive. “’s not like I can just bang them out, ‘ere—oh look, here comes another one down the line, better slap this bit on.”

“I didn’t mean it like that, John,” Paul said, too quickly and too guiltily. John felt a stab of guilt himself as he lifted his gaze to Paul’s once more and saw the earnest shine in his eyes. Paul was like that, instantly regretting it when his prodding cut too deep.

“I know,” John said, as gently as he could. “’s just…Christ, Paul, I’m fuckin’ coming up dry lately. Can’t think of a fucking thing.”

Paul’s mouth pressed into a firm little line as he said lightly, testing to see, John knew at once, “Haven’t had the time though—we’ve been fuckin’ dragged about on tour for forever, seems.”

“Never had a problem, before,” John said, doing his best to keep his voice on level but of course Paul could see through that just as well as he bent forward and reached over to clasp his arm reassuringly. The soft warmth of his fingers tingled through John’s system. Then Paul’s hand had lifted away, the moment brief and gone like so many others, and John cursed himself as the feeling lingered. He watched blankly as Paul withdrew from him neatly, crossing the room to rummage in his suitcase.

“Well, you’re bound to get inspiration now, anyroad,” Paul declared, barely serious, throwing a wink over his shoulder at him. “You’re in Paris!”

John felt a swoop in his stomach, half sick, half sweet, but tried to ignore it. “Fat lot of good it’ll do me, stuck up in ‘ere the whole time,” he retorted, managing to keep his tone neutral.

“Ask Neil to fetch you a bit of Paris,” Paul suggested, the innuendo slightly ruined by his distraction with the jumble of clothes he was pawing through.

“Wanker,” John rejoined lazily, relieved to leave it at that as Paul snickered but didn’t reply. He took a drag and observed dispassionately as Paul emerged from the mess with a pair of flannel pajamas, raising a disbelieving eyebrow at him where he felt the urge to coo.

“Cold in ‘ere,” Paul said defensively. “Besides, you’ve got some too.”

True enough. Didn’t fit the image, though. Paul, on the other hand…he sneered at the thought of all those girls with their “I Love Paul” buttons fussing over His Cuteness bundled up in his flannels.

“Didn’t know it got so cold in Paris,” Paul was saying, “I mean, wasn’t too bad when we were here…”

“That was October, son,” John reminded him. Warmth suffused him as the memory of his their last trip here together was brought to the fore, as _Paul_ brought it to the fore, from where it had been lurking in the back of his mind ever since they’d taken up residency at the Olympique. He put out his cigarette with a careful glance in Paul’s direction, strangely unsure. “God, remember the last time we were here? Feels like it’s been ages.”

Paul smiled dreamily, pausing in the middle of unbuttoning his shirt. “Seeing the Eiffel Tower for the firs’ time, and all that…”

John felt a restless surge inside him at the blandness of Paul’s reminiscence. His heart beat painfully against his ribs.

“Became the Beatles then, too,” he pressed, resisting the aching temptation to say Lennon/McCartney (JohnandPaul) as vague images of Paul then, of them together in Paris, flitted across his mind—cavorting about the streets with a bottle of wine, hanging about in cafés and pretending to be artistes, Paul’s face, full of Paris, cheerful and rapturous and beautiful, and—and—

“Ah yes, the haircut,” Paul intoned, mock gravely, and John struggled to catch up with what he was saying. Paul grinned at him, unaware. “Life would’ve been a lot simpler if we’d chickened out, y’think?”

A slow grin came to his face as he remembered being crammed into Jurgen’s tiny little bathroom together, his muscles a bit stiff and unnatural. “Nearly did, you were a wreck about it right after.”

“No, I wasn’t,” Paul contradicted him immediately, uncertainly, voice strained high with indignation. “I didn’t…”

“Thought it made you look soft, you did,” John insisted teasingly, “Had to talk you down.”

Paul blinked at him before his features settled blandly again. “Well, it suits me fine now,” he said, just short of smug. Matter-of-fact. Yes, love, it suits me fine now, I mean look, the line to shag me goes all the way to about China if you’d like get in it and wait your turn.

It was like a blow to John’s gut even when it shouldn’t have been by now. Reality and all that. Paul wasn’t just his Paul anymore, wasn’t just the fat little Elvis he’d let in his band or the boy who’d taught him to play real music or the mate he’d been through fucking everything with; he was Beatle Paul McCartney too, he was all of England’s now. Wasn’t the boy who looked in the mirror and needed John in order to like what he saw.

But still John clutched onto that Paul, the one in Jurgen’s bathroom, couldn’t help himself. He watched hazily as Paul, fully changed now, crawled into bed and pulled the covers over his head, snuggling down.

John was still fully clothed, bed done up and not an ounce of tiredness in his veins.

“’Night, John,” Paul mumbled regardless.

John felt like swearing to himself, like he would sometimes back in the day, back in the universe where Julian did not exist and he’d been free, when Cynthia held out on him and trooped back to Hoylake with nary a glimpse of tit. Paul had never held out on him back then, back in that time when The Beatles were just another shitty little Liverpool group and John and Paul were just a couple of broke Scousers with guitars on their backs and ridiculous, half-said dreams between them.

Instead, with a muttered “’Night,” he crossed the room and clicked off the lights obligingly, hissing when he stubbed his toe on Paul’s suitcase on the way back to his bed.

He undressed gracelessly and got into bed, tried with all his might to ignore the soft, fucking faggy part of him that wanted to climb in next to Paul. The part that lay there, alone in the dark, listening to Paul’s breathing deepen and even out, wondering where the fuck they were and where they were headed.

 

“A man could get used to this, y’know,” Ringo said in satisfaction as the Princess edged carefully away from the theatre and he settled back into the seat, as comfortable with the other Beatles’ bodies as he was with his own.

George grinned wearily, going along with it because it was Ringo. “The girls, the car, the money—”

“The _money_ ,” Paul said almost simultaneously, giggling. John felt the slight quiver of laughter in his shoulder, squashed close to him where he was crowded against the window. “And the girls, yeah, the girls.”

“Screamin’ twelve-year-olds, y’mean,” John cut in. Screaming twelve-year-olds indeed, with their sickly “I love Paul” and “I love John” badges, inexpertly made up and crying and pelting them with jelly bellies like bullets.

Paul stilled in silent, irritating disapproval next to him but didn’t say anything about it, not that John had really expected him to. Ringo, though, said gamely, “Not all of ‘em, though; there’s enough of the rest of ‘em to go ‘round.”

“You must be jokin’,” John said, a sharp note of humor, bizarrely aware of the fine tension in Paul’s arm pressed shoulder to elbow with his, bizarrely fixated. “One look at Paul’s pretty face ‘n you’d be left cold, son—and the way he goes through ‘em…”

“Ta, John,” Paul said composedly, snorting. Didn’t even consider whether it was a compliment.

“Nah, there’s enough of them,” George said, an odd, hard edge to his voice as he peered out his window into the crowd. 

“Anyroad, who’s got Cyn waitin’ for ‘im then?” Ringo said lightly, reaching around Paul to nudge his shoulder, who smiled just short of a laugh.

“Fuck off,” John muttered, and Paul and Ringo laughed, loud and brief, and George too. He felt a sharp twinge of annoyance at the sound, at the sudden flash of Cyn at home, with her feather duster and rubber gloves and dark roots in her blonde hair.

A toothy girl rapped on John’s window and pressed her face against the glass. That got a little wave from Paul and a half-grin from Ringo, both of them leaning to see around John. He snorted, wondered why the two of them were the ones in the middle.

“They’re fuckin’ potty, the whole lot of them,” he sneered as the girl fell back and the car peeled away for good; something tight in his chest eased slightly. He glanced out the window once more, scanning the brimming Paris streets before sitting back again. “’Sides, most of them’ve been fellas, here.”

George’s mouth twisted in distaste. “Bit off, isn’t it?”

“Bit _funny_ ,” John elaborated, waggling his eyebrows.

“Bit funny, yeah,” Paul agreed absently. He crossed his legs and hunched forward slightly, withdrawing from John’s side as he propped his elbow on his knee, chin on his hand. He stared out John’s window; John felt his gaze brush him, wanted to lean forward and get the full of it. “Least they listen to us, though.”

“Just not what I was expecting, is all,” George said, as if that ended it.

“What were you expecting, then?” John pressed derisively, in the kind of mood where he couldn’t let anything go before it turned to shit. “A load of sexy French birds screaming your name?”

Paul laughed yet again; a responding uneasy mix of satisfaction and irritation laced through his gut.

“Gits,” George groused. “You two’ve already been ‘ere before.”

John glanced at Paul, unable to help himself, following his vague gaze to the city and the night outside. He felt reckless suddenly, wired. “Didn’t get much of that, then, either.” 

Paul tensed beside him and when his eyes shifted slightly to him, John caught them and held them with his own, a thrill shooting up his spine, electric and immediate. Then at George’s disgusted sigh Paul gave a start, imperceptible but still, and looked away. John snorted.

“Well, I’d settle for anyone but you lot at the moment,” Ringo announced good-naturedly, keeping the peace once more. Fuckin’ good old Rings.

“Just what are you suggestin’ there, Ringo?” Paul barked, turning to him, mock-stern. 

“I’m only sayin’, Paul, I’m only sayin’!” Ringo said right back, just as loud and going along with it. Laughter for the rest of them, a half-smile, stiff and forced, from John.

Silence settled among the four of them; John dug in his pocket for a ciggie and came up empty, so George passed out ciggies for him, and then Ringo and Paul, too. He lit up with and smoked automatically, welcoming the burn of smoke in his lungs and throat.

At length, he reached over and cranked his window down a sliver so that the smoke dissipated slightly and a thin burst of wintry air hit his face. Ringo squawked in protest, but John ignored him, knew he didn’t mean it too much. He needed it, needed fresh air, a tiny, stolen little bit of reality.

Then suddenly he realized there was a warm leg pressed along his, knee knocking him slightly, but he didn’t care and teeth gritted as his heart leapt in his chest, he pressed back, absurdly delicate, as if anything more’d push Paul clean away. Awareness zinged through him.

“A man could get used to this,” Ringo sighed again.

John looked out the window but didn’t see a thing, mind trained on Paul as he nudged gently back and their legs pressed tight together.

 

“Number one,” Paul announced to the empty room, whole being shining with glee.

“America,” John agreed, stumbling in behind him and closing their door. When Paul weaved slightly but made no effort to turn the lights on, John ran a hand along the wall until he flicked the switch. Harsh yellow light, hotel light, flooded down on them. Between that and the pleasant drunk and the soaring feeling coursing through him, the air between them was honest and bursting bright.

“Number fuckin’ one!” Paul said again, voice high and rushed with excitement, with both their excitement.

John felt the grin crack his face so wide it hurt. “America, baby!”

“America!” Paul repeated loudly. His voice swam slightly in John’s ears, slurred and excited, and then Paul tripped over his own feet as he stepped forward. John reached out for his elbow, pressing up behind him to steady him.

“You’re too drunk, Paul,” John accused lightly.

“I don’t think I’ve had enough, yet,” Paul giggled, and it bubbled through him and into John until it was coming out his own mouth and he was laughing.

Too drunk and too warm and too Paul.

“Well, there’s not a fuckin’ drop in ‘ere,” he said, sobering up only slightly, wondering hazily where the complimentary champagne had got off to, deciding if there had been any the lot of them must’ve drunk it already that night. “So much for the suite, ‘n all.”

Paul bounced free of him, further into the room. “So much for Paris!”

John swayed, and felt an odd, slight pang of annoyance through his happiness at the sudden loss of proximity, at the words buoying out at him. “That’s not…”

“There’ll be whiskey in America, though,” Paul continued, brightening, oblivious. “Bet that’s all they fuckin’ drink, Americans.”

“We’re not in America just yet,” John told him. Another twinge that he chose to ignore.

“Oh, sod it, might as well be!” Paul retorted. John’s mouth twisted into a smile of its own accord, oddly strange to his lips, as Paris faded into visions of America, of New York and Los Angeles and Texas, places too big and distant and formless for them, places waiting for them. He wavered, but then Paul stumbled over himself and laughed again, imposed himself firmly again. There was a pause before he snorted, “I’m so fuckin’ drunk…”

“Never could hold your liquor, could you?” John said, almost gently, disgustedly, as he moved in towards him again. “Come ‘ead.”

He grabbed Paul’s arm and slipped an arm around his waist and steered him slowly to the sofa.

“Ah, thanks John. Johnny.” The murmurs subsided as John dumped him onto the cushions and then took a seat beside him as he was tugged down, too close if had been anybody else, much too close; Paul was all but tucked into his side, and for room’s sake more than anything else John had drawn his arm up along the back of the couch, so maybe their elbows wouldn’t knock the way their knees were doing. He could feel the warmth of Paul’s body almost as if it were his own, the warmth of his gaze on his face.

John stared back into those eyes, realizing anew the green flecks and honeyed chocolate. Kaleidoscope eyes. He could see Paul in them, they were Paul.

“I’m not that drunk, y’know,” Paul said suddenly, carefully almost.

“Fallin’ all over yourself,” John retorted, a concession to the reality that existed somewhere beyond the two of them, like a splinter in his mind. Paul made an inaudible noise low in his throat and his eyes flickered; John’s heart seized slightly.

“’s only the champagne, it always gets me like this,” Paul muttered. There was a strange, questioning lilt to his voice that John could scarcely credit.

“You’re always like this,” John said, knew there was some truth to that at least.

Paul brow creased slightly before his features smoothed over once more. He smiled, a small, winsome quirk of his lips that didn’t quite reach his eyes somehow. “Well, I guess I’m just happy, then.”

There was an air of finality to it, and in any case John had no reply to that. His breath caught when Paul tilted his head in and leaned his cheek against his shoulder.

They sat for a while, soaking in the silence, the euphoria of earlier fading into a more familiar intimacy. John closed his eyes and let himself have the moment; it was like a deep breath, being like this with Paul, sometimes. As much as he drove him mad and tense and—and whatever else—he could always soothe him like no one else. There was something calming in just sitting there and allowing Paul to _know_ , calming when he knew he could always have that, they could always have that, even with the other things John wanted but couldn’t have. Couldn’t ask for.

Paul squirmed a little against him, a sudden wave of the giddiness John had contained. “We did it, John!” John felt a flash of something (Tenderness? Humor?) at the excited squeal, resisted the urge to give Paul a squeeze. Then he quieted again. “We made it.”

“Yeah,” John said, didn’t know what else to say. Yeah, they’d made it. Made it. Number one. America. _America_. Number one in America. He thought that maybe if he weren’t so drunk he’d be sure this was all a fucking dream.

“Did you ever think we’d get here?” Paul asked, as if reading his mind.

“Still don’t even think it’s happened now,” John replied, feeling a hint of laughter razor up through into his voice as he considered the craziness of the situation.

Paul nodded. “Has to sink in, doesn’t it,” he reasoned. Or maybe they had to sink into it.

“America,” John said yet again. It was useless, trying to get his head around it; there was nothing he could say, nothing deep or impressive or intelligent, or even flippant and clever, nothing Beatley. Being at a loss brought the insanity bubbling up through him like nothing else, until he wanted to scream and shout and get under everyone’s, anyone else’s, skin. Only Paul had ever kept it at bay, kept him from that.

“Yeah…” Paul continued, and John could almost feel the curve of his mouth against his shoulder, could hear the smile curling up warmly in his voice, “America. Toppermost…toppermost of the…”

“Poppermost,” John finished for him.

“Mm. That.” Paul waved a hand vaguely, sounding almost amused. “Right up there with—what is it…? Oh—‘There! I’ve Said It Again.’”

“God, don’t say that,” John said, pulling a face as the fragmented memory of the song rose up before him. Easy listening, toothless, useless…a steaming pile of dung. “Fuckin’ Bobby Vinton.” 

“What more can I say?” Paul said, voice trembling with suppressed laughter before it burst out, loud and expressive, and he giggled in the aftermath as he tried to get control of himself. John had become intensely aware of Paul’s smile, of his laughter now, his mind honing in on it a relief from the massive, unsettled sensation that had taken hold since Brian had come in to tell them and the initial, wild joy had blazed through. Paul sat up, lifting his head from his shoulder, crooning, “There’s nothing to hide…”

“Don’t,” John protested, unable to help the smile from twisting up his mouth, “Not that fucking song—”

“It’s better than burning inside…” Paul’s voice wobbled dangerously, singing around his smile.

“Paul, for fuck’s sake!”

“I love you, no use to pretend—” he sniggered as John poked at his side and a brief struggle broke out, but persisted, John relenting suddenly and shouting along with him, “There! I’ve said it again.” 1

Paul gave a great hoot and then collapsed into giggles as John watched him bemusedly and tried valiantly (vainly) not to join in. He poked Paul’s side again, coming up against the underside of his ribs and soft flesh as Paul twisted away.

“Don’t remember the rest of it,” Paul said at length.

“There is a God,” John replied, teasing for all his sarcasm, and Paul leaned his head back against him peacefully and closed his eyes, again. John’s breath caught and he exhaled forcibly, chest felt tight and obstructed from the laughter and now the resumed closeness.

A long silence elapsed between them, soft and warm. Silence said a lot between the two of them, John thought, heart faltering slightly as he glanced down at Paul and caught the delicate curl of his eyelashes against his cheeks and the graceful arch of his brow. There were the frigid silences, hard and harsh as cold steel, when Paul was freezing him out, ignoring him; the tense ones when they had hit a wall; the ones like these, fragile and transient, that John took because he didn’t know how to break them. He wanted to speak, didn’t know if he could, didn’t know what he could say anyway. Being drunk made it easier; he didn’t notice as much the way his heart hammered and ached or the way his lungs seemed to shrink.

Abruptly he realized that Paul was humming again, faint and childish at first but growing more certain. He smiled vaguely as he picked out the melody, “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” as he remembered when Paul had plunked out the chord on the piano in the Asher’s music room, the thrill of creativity between the two of them.

“Yeah you got that something, I think you’ll understand, when I say that something, I wanna hold your hand,” Paul sang softly. 2

John was struck with the sudden image of the song playing on American radios, of American birds singing along like Paul was doing.

“Oh please,” Paul continued, and John joined in suddenly again, sliding naturally into the low part, “say to me you’ll let me be your man, and please, say to me, you’ll let me hold your hand,” Paul’s voice cracked and he giggled through the rest of it as John strained comically to take over the high part, “you’ll let me hold your hand, I wanna hold your hand—“ 2

“Enough, enough!” Paul cried, laughing again, falling back.

“Fuckin’ hell,” John muttered, suddenly struck with the urge to smoke or drink or ingest something that wasn’t Paul, feeling cold as he looked at Paul from farther along the couch, head up and eyes sparkling at him. Their knees were still pressed together. He was maybe a few inches more inches apart from him, but still. But still.

Paul didn’t seem to notice the loss, as he said intimately, “That’s us.”

John’s stomach swooped, totally apart from his registration of the vague echo of their earlier conversation about Elvis and Bob Dylan. Distant when close and warm when cold and intimate when John could never really have him.

“Yeah, Lennon/McCartney,” John said, taking pain to keep himself flippant, to keep his answering smile from going to deep. “Never been another one like us.”

Paul’s smile broadened. “Yeah, we’re twice as good as the rest of ‘em.”

“Twice as good as Bobby Vinton, least,” John smirked, rewarded as Paul hooted before abruptly sobering again, staring intently into John’s eyes, eyes heavy and uncertain and oddly, almost awkwardly sincere. John met his gaze, his world narrowed down to it for a moment, the weight of it burning uneasily into him. He wondered what Paul could see, blinked, and then wondered what he himself had been seeing, if he’d really seen it.

“No, really,” Paul said, “All the rest of them too.”

John hesitated before hitching on a careless smile. “Yeah, with Lennon as the brains and McCartney as the looks…”

“Piss off, John!” Paul retorted, seeming at once nettled and flattered. John watched him with interest, resisting the urge to snort at first (can’t have it both ways), but then the look from before returned fleetingly; maybe it had been there the whole time and John had somehow lost sight of it? He knew all of Paul’s moods, knew what each looked like better than Paul himself, but still, there was the inner part of him, the Paul inside all the other Pauls, that he couldn’t touch.

Fuck, he was drunk.

Paul was still staring at him, and he realized he was still staring at Paul. Another silence, tenser. “No, it’s like we’re two of the same people though, isn’t it?”

Fuck. John felt dazzled, staggered as the words hit him, felt something fierce and nameless tear through him at the sheer intimacy of that, of what that meant, of the words themselves coming from Paul’s mouth, of Paul’s voice saying them. The Paul inside all the other Pauls, reaching out to him—saying that he did know him, was just like him and in that way he was his. His heart was racing dangerously and his mind was flung out somewhere in outer space; he couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think…

 _Intimate when John could never really have him_. He ignored that.

“Fuck Lennon/McCartney,” John said, and it cost him an enormous effort to keep his voice steady; his hands were shaking, his mouth was dry. “We should’ve just called it McLennon.”

Paul smiled, just a little curve of his lips, oddly wistful, that struck John more powerfully than his sexiest smirk, his brightest PR smile. “Or McLen—McLennoney, McLennonartney, Lennartney…”

“Doesn’t work, that,” John murmured, returning his smile, literally he thought—his smile was Paul’s smile, gone through him and coming to his own mouth. “McLennon’s the only one that works.”

“S’pose you ‘ad that all worked out,” Paul said, teasing in his affected annoyance.

John’s heart seized, strangely. “Well, there’s John Paul, too—”

“Like a bloody pope?”

“JohnandPaul, JohnandPaul,” John finished in a painful, exhilarating rush, feeling exposed and vulnerable, as if he’d just handed Paul his heart, all bloody and messy and palpitating, veins sticking out. Waiting to see if he’d drop it in disgust, or, or…accept it.

“JohnandPaul,” Paul repeated, solemn. In the pause that followed John wanted to take it back or shake Paul or kiss him. Kiss him. His chest constricted as he stared at Paul, forced himself to stare at him, saw his mouth open. “That’s what we’ve always been, isn’t it?”

“JohnandPaul,” John affirmed once again, feeling dizzy and relieved, as if he’d just taken a great gulp of air after holding his breath for a few minutes.

Paul’s little smile was back; John had to remind himself to breathe as Paul edged closer to him and a hand curled into his hair, and then a warm mouth found his; he could feel it as the curve faded and a soft sigh gusted out, as the lips parted ever so slightly and crushed deliciously against his own. John’s eyes slid closed, arousal spiking through him as he pressed his mouth to Paul’s, each slide of their lips sending a shower of sparks through his system, keeping their kiss chaste as long as he could (it was oddly thrilling, innocent) before falling into it. His hand came up to hold Paul’s face, keeping him where he wanted him as his tongue brushed his lips, seeking entrance; Paul’s hand tightened fitfully in his hair before he submitted with a soft noise, and then John slid his tongue into Paul’s mouth and the kiss deepened, open-mouthed and hot and wet.

John’s body sang and thrummed and sunburst exploded inside of him, white hot on the edges and incandescent as it danced vaguely through him, the heat of Paul’s mouth against his keeping him latched greedily to the moment. His lips were soft, as soft as they looked but maybe not really, because his kiss was challenging, matching John in a way that excited him blackly, pushing him further and further until he barely knew the depth of his desperation. His nerve endings were on fire, he was too hard already; his blood spat and surged when Paul moaned into his mouth and their tongues slid together messily and Paul’s hand slipped from his hair to caress the back of his neck, the roughened fingertips sending a shock through him, like the slight scrape of stubble against his jaw and the hard angles beneath his own hands.

Then Paul broke away, gasping for air, breath puffing against John’s mouth as he followed him for another kiss, didn’t want the feeling to end, the connection to falter even for a second. Paul fell into it immediately, sloppily, the contact softer, sweeter now as John took his mouth. John’s mind clouded from the feel of it swirling through him, from the lack of oxygen as well; he was dizzy, could barely think, much less breathe...

He bit down on Paul’s bottom lip roughly before breaking off finally, air bursting into his lungs from the small space between them. He opened his eyes, found Paul watching him through heavy lids, lips parted, shiny and swollen; his heart fluttered and his breath caught in his roughened throat embarrassingly. It was just, Paul was so fucking pretty, fucking beautiful right now. Arousal surged through him, oddly delicate and intricate and soft; he lifted his hand to Paul’s cheek, caressing it tenderly, thumb brushing across his lips, shuddering when he felt the lightest of pressure returned.

“You’re so…” John muttered, heart seizing as he realized abruptly that he had spoken aloud and Paul’s perfect eyebrows gathered infinitesimally in a mute question. He swallowed.

“So what?” Paul breathed around his thumb, a note of genuine curiosity, the slightest hint of fascination, behind the characteristic flirty lilt to his words. It was exciting, somehow.

“So…” John faltered slightly, thought it’d sound queer to call a lad beautiful (even if he was, more beautiful than any bird he’d had), drawn on by Paul’s eyes, “So fucking sexy.”

It was his turn to be fascinated at the look on Paul’s face, strangely, bizarrely, impossibly flattered and enthralled as his eyes widened and searched his with something approaching disbelief. Not exactly; John knew that Paul knew the effect he had on people, had to know from the way he mercilessly charmed the pants off everyone he met, from the press to birds to John himself. More coyness than disbelief, really, like hearing it from John was what had unsettled him. The idea of it shot through him hotly, appeasing and arousing all his possessive instincts towards him.

Then Paul curled his arms around his shoulders more fully, bodies pressed together and legs tangled (one of Paul’s had hooked over his at some point), breath brushing each other’s lips as their eyes locked interminably. John’s eyes flicked down to Paul’s mouth, heady, agonizing anticipation filling him as he waited fro his kiss. The moment lengthened, hanging on the edge of something, as Paul allowed himself to be held, waiting for John to act, he realized abruptly, a tense, vague surrender. The revelation tore through John ferociously, gently, lust and tenderness cascading through him in equal parts.

John pressed a kiss to Paul’s lips, teasing and short, before he lowered his lips to his neck, sliding down, scraping his teeth along the soft white skin before sucking down hard, and this was as intimate as the kissing, just in a different way; the smell of Paul filled his nostrils, alcohol and cigarettes and something of Paris, too, triggering the memory of another hotel room and another Paul. He bit down at the thought, at the jolt it caused, heard Paul groan, felt his fingers clutching painfully at his shoulders.

He bit harder and was rewarded with another groan; he felt it this time, felt Paul’s voice rising up through his throat…

“Fuck, Johnny,” Paul moaned. He only called him that when he was drunk or bitchy or feeling playful, and sometimes when he was drunk and they were thusly engaged (not quite fucking). Unbidden John wondered what he’d call him if they were really fucking, what sort of noises he’d make when he thrust into him.

The thought surged straight to his dick.

“Paul,” he muttered thickly, leaning his forehead against Paul’s neck and reaching up (somewhat shakily) to unbutton Paul’s shirt. Needed more skin, fuck, just needed more. His fingers tripped stupidly over the buttons; he wished they were still in those fucking pajamas, that they hadn’t gotten dressed to go down and hang drunkenly about the Seine with George and Rings and Neil. “Fucking Christ…”

“Here, I’ll...”

Suddenly Paul’s hands had joined his, working at his own buttons with a grace John still managed to resent and envy, even in his current state. John lifted his head and shoved his hands out of the way, making a frustrated noise low in his throat. “No, I’ve got it—”

It was important to him for some reason, that he should be the one to undress Paul, and if that seemed queer too, John was too far gone too care by now; might as well add it to the list of a thousand other queer things Paul had inspired in him. But still, these goddamn buttons; John gritted his teeth and kept on going, feeling strangely self-conscious again, almost as if he were the one getting naked here. There was something odd to Paul’s gaze. To distract them both from it, he leaned forward and kissed along Paul’s cheek and jaw; Paul expelled a breath shakily into his ear before he pawed restlessly at John’s shirt himself. Each clumsy brush with his chest was electric, distracting him from the task at hand, even more so when Paul’s lips sought out his again and his tongue stroked into his mouth. Somewhere in the middle of the kiss John succeeded, Paul’s shirt falling open beneath his hands. He eased it from his shoulders, carefully almost, lifting away to press his mouth to the newly exposed skin.

Paul trembled, abandoning his attempt in kind to fist his shirt, letting out a loud moan. John smirked in spite of himself, feeling strangely powerful, newly assured of himself; he tugged at the shirt again, more sharply this time, with a firm “Off.”

John watched with aching impatience as Paul bent his arms back and quickly struggled out of his sleeves, getting caught for an instant before pulling free and discarding it as John pulled him back against him again, briefly, perversely embarrassed by his eagerness before Paul kissed him again and feeling flooded him.

He ran his hands along the planes of Paul’s back and chest, warm skin flowing under his hands, soft and smooth and lovely and John couldn’t get enough of it, it wasn’t enough yet. Before he knew it, his hands had reached Paul’s waist and his fingers were fumbling with his belt. A noise burst out from Paul, raw and ragged and impatient, and before he could go on, Paul reached down and did it himself, yanking his trousers down, pants as well, kicking out of the pant legs until he sat against John, completely naked now.

“There,” Paul said, and for all his fire just a moment ago his voice was quiet, faint, subtly vulnerable, his breathing shallow as he stared into John’s face. “There.”

John licked his lips, at once totally, powerfully aware of Paul’s nudity, mind suddenly clear, despite his overlapping drunkenness and elation and tenderness and his raging hard-on. He couldn’t say why it struck him so much then; he’d seen Paul naked countless times, touched him and held him and kissed him when he was naked, been naked with him. John stared at him, suddenly unsure of himself. Hesitantly he placed a hand on Paul’s knee, stroked his leg as Paul watched him, leaning in slightly so that their faces were once more only a few millimeters apart.

John’s hand slid up further; Paul bit his lip as his fingers caressed his inner thigh. The next pass brought his hand higher. Paul whimpered. At that, before he could think, John abruptly moved his hand to palm Paul’s erection, rewarded by a long moan that rose from deep in his throat, catching with his short, staccato breath. John stroked him slowly, building a languid rhythm as he observed Paul’s face intently. Lips parted, panting lightly, bitten at a choked off moan. Dusting of pink high on pale cheeks. Eyes, darkened and flickering and half open, at once lazy and desperate with pleasure. Moans at first, then murmuring and muttering, incoherence as hips arched up restlessly into his fist. A hand shot out to grip his collar.

“Oh God oh fuck, John, _don’t_ ,” Paul babbled. “Shit, I can’t, can’t, oh fuck _please_ …”

The words shot to his own cock, neglected and straining against his pants, even as his hand slid up and down Paul’s silken, swollen length. Didn’t want Paul to come just yet, but didn’t want to stop either, to stop watching his face like this, maybe he did want Paul to come, just to see. To see. It was somehow more intimate than the kissing, even, their eye contact.

But Paul broke the moment because suddenly his mouth was against his, all lips and teeth and tongue, and this was good too, too fucking good; it was as if things had unfrozen again and now time sped along furiously; John’s free hand roamed over Paul’s body, pulling him close, no closer than Paul had already pressed himself, as close as he could get. Paul shuddered violently against him, hand abruptly scrabbling against his own, trying in vain to tug it away from his dick. John, feeling something wild and perverse and powerful rush through him, pulled away from Paul’s lips, just far enough so that he could his eyes, and squeezed roughly, jerking his hand upwards one more time. Paul came, spurting semen all over John’s hand and his own stomach. He watched hungrily as Paul hissed and let out a stream of curses in one long moan, his eyes melting into ecstasy, focusing on John before slipping shut as he collapsed against him, a trembling, shivering mess. Swirls of tenderness mixed strangely with the jagged bursts of arousal that coursed through him; he was painfully aware of his erection even as he tried to give Paul time, kissed his hair and wrapped his arms around him, holding him loosely.

It might’ve been an eternity or a minute when Paul disengaged from him gently, sitting up, oddly flushed and awkward.

“I, I’m…” Paul bit his lip, hesitating as his flush deepened, now looking somewhere around John’s left knee. John became abruptly, hideously aware of Paul’s embarrassment that maybe he’d come soon.

“Don’t,” John said through gritted teeth, willing his body to calm down, trying to head it off.

“It…I…I—it, I didn’t mean—”

“Paul,” John cut him off forcefully, maybe coming off as irritated because Paul was looking as uncertain as ever. His chest tightened as he pushed himself into the confession. “I wanted you to, all right?” Paul’s eyes snapped back up to his and an illicit thrill kicked in his gut as he went on, “I wanted you to come.”

Paul blinked. John tried to judge his reaction, his expression dragging through his gut before John could even form a full impression of it. He thought maybe he was a little shaken, but there was no mockery, no closing off; Paul’s eyes were open, sincere still as he looked into John’s face, utterly serious.

“Is there something else you want, John?” he murmured at length, reaching a hand over to touch John’s leg. Lust coursed through John and bore him firmly away again; only Paul could pull that off, be confident and sexual but at the same time completely demure. It encapsulated so much of what fascinated him about Paul, his androgyny, his ability to be two things at once, the countless little contradictions and quirks and layers that he was sure only he, John, knew so well.

John wondered where his sarcastic wit had fled to. On the whole he should’ve been grateful that Paul leaned forward to kiss him gently, thoroughly but not with the same edge as before. John kept it as soft as he could for as long as he could, but by the time Paul had finished unbuttoning his shirt (more efficiently, this time) and started stroking him through his trousers, his tongue was all but shoved down Paul’s throat and he was groaning into his mouth.

Paul smiled against his mouth slightly, trying and failing to pull away at first as John clutched him to him, kept him in place. He fell into the kiss briefly again—a brush of his tongue against John’s, a nip to his upper lip—before he freed himself this time and lowered his head to kiss along John’s collarbone and then slowly down his chest. And then, before John knew what was happening, he had slid to his knees between John’s legs, looking up at him. John’s breath caught, strangled in his throat as the implication hit him.

Paul smiled up at him, a shadow of the seductive, sexy trademark smile John knew so well, but there was something more honest, more nervous, almost, about it. He cupped John again, drawing a ragged moan from him.

“Fuck, Paul,” he said, voice cracking raw and sharp. Their eyes met for a long moment.

He half expected Paul to tease him until he gave in, until he knew how much he wanted it, but Paul just unbuckled his belt evenly and unzipped his fly and then John wrenched his hips upward so that he could pull his pants down, just enough to expose his erection to the air for the first time that night. John shivered, his blood spitting, hot and agonizing. Paul took the naked length of him in hand and gave him a pull before getting up further on his knees. He grunted quietly as Paul’s breath gusted against his skin, as he watched Paul hover over his dick. Paul sat still for a second, poised as John went mad from the sensation and from want, before he pressed his lips softly to the head, tongue flicking out, as if to taste him. John cursed loudly, obscenely, before he was reduced to a groaning, shuddering mess, his lust crashing down over him, drowning him as Paul’s mouth stretched wide around him and took him in slowly. His dick was engulfed in wet heat; Paul’s tongue brushed against it and John gripped at the couch uselessly. When Paul’s lips were wrapped about the base, he looked up at John through his lashes and John forgot to breathe.

“Fuck,” John muttered again. He reached down shakily to caress Paul’s face. His thumb brushed across swollen lower lip, swearing heatedly when it came into contact with the underside of his dick. He fell back again, hand slipping around into his hair, as Paul began to move, sucking sloppily; the visual was too much if he wanted to last. There was something blackly arousing about Paul on his knees, that mouth around him, licking and kissing at him before sliding back down, taking him in, inexpert but eager and all the more enticing for it.

Sent his mind to dark and forbidden and exciting places. Fucking Paul, fucking his mouth, fucking him up the ass; he wondered what it’d be like to be inside him, where it really counted, to fuck Paul and bring him off from his own pleasure. To really have him, claim him.

His head thrown back with his hand over his eyes, he loosed a stream of curse words and endearments and threats and groans. The image of Paul kneeling in front of him in a dirty Hamburg alleyway flashed before his eyes, there and gone in the same second. He was yanked sharply back into the present when Paul did something fancy with his tongue and moaned softly around his dick.

“Oh Jesus oh fuck, baby,” he uttered, words tripping over each other, “ _Paul_ —”

He was thrusting up into his mouth, unable to hold back any longer, hands gripping Paul’s hair too tightly, helplessly. His eyes were drawn back to Paul as he bobbed his head up and down on John’s lap, hand grasping him where his mouth couldn’t reach.

He could feel his orgasm towering up within him, building up and building up and building up—

Paul sucked harder, his dick gliding smoothly, in and out of the slick, hot wetness—

John’s eyes flickered and for a second he imagined fucking Paul, imagined his eyes staring adoringly into his, arms and legs wrapped around him as he thrust in and out of him, moaning his name—

_Is there something else you want, John?_

Then Paul’s eyes flicked up to his, intense and heavy and iridescent and beautiful. There was an instant where John tried to warn Paul, to pull away, but Paul held his gaze steadily and took him in as far as he could.

John’s orgasm tore through him, white hot as it consumed him. Through oblivion he could see Paul’s eyes staring into him. His hips bucked uncontrollably, he thought he might’ve shouted out, almost did it again, almost came again, when Paul lifted away and swallowed carefully, wiping the back of his hand across his lips.

Was vaguely, shakily aware when he dropped to his knees down beside him, holding Paul to him and kissing him, desperately seeking his own taste in his mouth. Seeking his own essence within Paul.

 

 

John was more aware a few hours later, smoking a cigarette and lounging against the headboard, naked. He was still awake; it felt like another night to him, separate from what had gone on before. On the first night, John and Paul had retired to their own beds, tired and drained, choosing sleep in lieu of a writing session. Then Brian had come pounding on their door with the news and they’d thrown a wild, impromptu celebration, taking turns riding on Mal’s back and holding a pillow fight with George and Ringo and getting more sloshed than anything. Night fell again when John and Paul had come back to the suite and had sex. It might’ve gone half past five in the normal sense of time, but in this fucked up world John placed himself at somewhere around two in the morning. Tiredness lurked at the edge of his consciousness, lulling him whenever the wiredness abated—going through customs between waking and sleep.

Paul made a soft sound in his sleep; John’s eyes trained to him, had never really looked away. That was another one of the queer things Paul brought out in him, the soft enjoyment he got in watching him sleep. Paul was beautiful in sleep, for a few hours as innocent as he looked, a bloody angel.

John exhaled smoke and resisted the urge to touch Paul, his face or his shoulder or any part of him, just some kind of contact. He could already feel reality pressing in on him, the reality where he and Paul were Beatles and he was married to Cyn and Paul was going with Jane Asher and they fucked every stray bit of cunt that wandered across their path. The reality where drunkenness was the only thing that made what they did with each other acceptable. Where John was left dealing with himself when things on his end got deeper and deeper, and messier too—the fear of losing Paul, the anger as he watched Paul parcel bits and pieces of himself away to the fans, Jane, everyone in the whole damn world, the fear (the knowledge) that what they had wasn’t real…

Real for Paul, at least. In the moments John allowed himself to be honest, when he looked at Paul or heard him laugh or speak or touched him or thought of him (right now), he knew that it was real for him. Real as anything else in his fucked up existence—certainly more real than his life with Cyn and Jules (as twisted as that was), or the life he’d been living the past two years, running from mobs of girls and mugging for the cameras and cracking wise to reporters. Maybe more real than the music they’d written, even.

John took a long drag and eyed Paul again.

Yes. More real than the music they’d written.

Should’ve known better with someone like Paul.

Bob Dylan sprang to mind. It was a bit strange to be thinking of him right then, but still. Every word he sang had the ring of real truth, because he fucking meant what he sang—he meant to say he hated war, that the Negro ought to have rights, that were some questions in this world that fucking cut you till you bled out.

John cast back to “She Loves You” and all the rest of what he and Paul’d done and felt a stab of bitterness. Didn’t mean a thing, that lot—just bits and pieces of things they’d felt or just come up with, cobbled together. Even “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” which John had been so ecstatic about when they’d written it, which had brought them America and flung their future to dizzying heights.

John reached out and stroked Paul’s hair, watching in fascination as his fingers trailed through the silky ebony locks.

 _I should’ve known better with someone like you._ 3

Abruptly an idea occurred to him, broke out in the open more like, because it had been stirring up in him for as long as this had gone on between them. A reckless, thrilling, deeply and intensely personal idea. He couldn’t be Bob Dylan but he could still be John Lennon. A Bob Dylan in his own right. Own write.

Could he?

The moment hung, suspended between them. Then John crushed his cigarette out, an oddly decisive action.

John lifted his hand away from Paul’s hair, loath to get up and get the pen and paper that were lying on the piano, but in a moment he was back and his ridiculous trepidation that somehow he wouldn’t find his Paul when he returned shriveled away. He flipped past the first page (the song Paul had been working on, “Can’t Buy Me Love” or something), then sat with his pen poised over paper.

He paused.

Then wrote it down. “I should’ve known better with someone like you.”

As he scribbled away, in torrents followed by difficult, protracted pauses, His foot found its way under the covers to press subtly against Paul’s shin. Might not have been his breath or his heartbeat, but it was still Paul, warm and close and wonderful.

_I should have known better with someone like you_  
_That I would love everything that you do_  
_I never realized what a kiss could be_  
_This could only happen to me_  
_Can’t you see, can’t you see_  
_That when I tell you that I love you,_  
_You’re gonna say you love me too,_  
_And when I ask you to be mine_  
_You’re gonna say you love me too_ 3

 

 

Sometimes John thought that after these few weeks in Paris he’d have a bit of Bob Dylan’s voice echoing around his head for the rest of his life. He felt like he knew the songs on Freewheelin’ better than the set they whistled through every night; maybe not as manic and precise as the imprint of all those songs he and Paul had lived off of as teenagers—Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly, _Elvis_ —maybe not as well as he knew his own and Paul’s either, but still. There was a spark there, some kind of recognition that he hung on to, that seemed missing out of everything else of late. Bob Dylan had spoilt the rest for now, but then perversely he’d made the half-formed aspirations in John’s head spiral higher.

“Love this song,” George sighed from across the room where he was sitting with Ringo.

‘A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall.’

John wasn’t sure if love was the right word, if it fit with that song, when Dylan had just croaked out a verse about kids with guns and swords. But he loved it himself.

Ringo sang along as Dylan once again reached the grim sort of chorus line, forcing his voice low and raspy around the words, “It’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, and it’s a hard, it’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall,” before spluttering out. George grinned and got a bright Ringo-grin back, John wasn’t in the mood for it, quite. Ringo coughed, cleared his throat. “Never thought someone could make _my_ singin’ look good.”

George scowled slightly and Ringo hastened to clear it up, “Jus’ my voice, like, George.”

George hummed low in his throat and slapped a card down, only to have Ringo best him. “Christ…”

“Ha!” Ringo cried in triumph, as ruthless when it came to cards as he was laid back elsewhere. Not that he wasn’t laid back with cards too, in his own way, just didn’t give a shit then if he stepped on one of their toes.

George grinned reluctantly. “If Paul were here…”

Something needled through John’s gut at that, at the mention of Paul’s name, even. He gritted his teeth and stared unseeingly at the paper under his nose.

“…I’d’ve made enough to retire by now,” Ringo finished for him, and they both laughed, George more of a snigger with a half-glance at John. He used to only laugh about John like that, back when John had been all hard edges and two years older when it mattered (still did, actually, laugh at him that way). He wasn’t sure when it had gotten to be like that with Paul. Maybe when they had stepped into the studio and suddenly _Paul_ was the man in his element.

“Guess I’ll just have to wait till we’ve done the America bit, that should do it,” Ringo went on. Good-humored, irreverent and totally faithful about it in a way John couldn’t be. But then, wasn’t up to him, the way it was up to John.

Up to him and Paul. He twirled the pen in his hand.

“He’s always been rubbish at this, Paul,” George said at length, and John was suddenly struck with the fact that George had known Paul years before him. The idea threw him, niggled at him weirdly. “Only don’t tell ‘im I said that, ‘e thinks he’s good…”

“Nah, he knows ‘e’s rubbish— _must_ know,” Ringo protested, chortling. Another grin from George. They went through another round and Ringo came out on top again. “Anyroad, you’re one to talk!”

“Haven’t lost yet,” George said grimly.

“Nearly,” Ringo replied, and because it was Ringo no one could hate him for it.

John watched them distantly. It had been just the three of them more often lately than in the old days. In Liverpool, Paul was the same old Paul he’d (they’d all) known for years, but in London he threw himself into being Beatle Paul. Living in that massive Wimpole Street house with the whole damn Asher family. Socializing, whirling around every fashionable circle and every fashionable scene with Jane—it was hard to tell who was being trotted around more like the show dog there. Paul, John decided sourly, because he was the one they both wanted to show off. Jane’d want to flaunt that she’d bagged a Beatle; didn’t matter that she was pretty and talented and accomplished in her own right, Paul was more than pretty and talented and accomplished enough for the both of them. Too much so, and Paul knew it too.

Probably the only person who loved Paul more than Paul himself was John.

John wasn’t sure Paul knew that, hoped to fucking Christ that he didn’t even while deep down he perversely hoped that he did.

Knew he didn’t.

“Should be back soon, shouldn’t he?” John said, trying hard to keep his voice level, casual. “Show’s in a few hours.”

George snorted. “If I was out with a bird like Jane Asher in Paris, you’d have to bloody drag me back in ‘ere.”

“Bugger off,” John muttered, lighting up a cigarette clenched tight between his teeth, smoke billowing out as he took a quick drag and welcomed the burn in his lungs and the niccotine lacing through his system. Ringo, on the edge of a laugh, sobered up abruptly as he caught the sharpness in John’s voice.

“Was there something you wanted goin’ over?” Ringo asked, as if he was treading on uncertain ground. He nodded towards the notebook, couldn’t see the scribbles and doodles and the cross outs. The blanks. The nothing to go over.

George looked around at him, tense. “Oh, have you got something new for us, then?” His voice was oddly unsure, conciliatory, an olive branch of sorts from their argument of a few days ago. Been a bit strange between them the last week or so, he’d forgotten in the glow of “I Wanna Hold Your Hand” and America but here it was again.

John decided he didn’t give a shit. He exhaled, ashed, sucked in some more smoke. “Just fuck off about it, yeah?”

George’s face tightened; he looked on the verge of saying something further but then just turned back to cards with Ringo. They played a few more rounds as John sat there emptily and the silence between them was louder than the refrain of harmonicas and twanging guitars and Dylan and _America_. Paul’s protracted absence was louder still.

John’s mouth twisted. Gone to extend the lovely Paul-and-Jane show to Paris for a few hours, had Paul, give this part of the world a bit of a thrill. She’d flown in to visit with him the other day and ever since then it hadn’t been John and Paul, it had been Paul and Jane and John when he had to, shunted back to shows and nightly sessions banging out songs at the piano. Business; might as well’ve been a stop into the office for all the good it was doing John. Oh yes, I’m free between seven and nine if you’d like to set up an appointment, else I’ll be busy fucking off with Jane Asher. Well, fair enough; he didn’t have red hair or tits or a fuck load of jumped up _connections_.

An ache pierced through him, long and poignant and fuck, he didn’t want to know what else, as the sudden image of waking up to Paul came to him. Sleeping, still pressed back against his chest where he’d gathered him up in his arms before dropping off. Then slipping back into a doze, waking up again and finding Paul dressed and sitting at the piano. Quietly working out “Can’t Buy Me Love,” the same as before.

John sighed, anything to ease the tightness in his chest, clenched the pen in his hand and gritted his teeth.

He couldn’t fucking work like this.

Looking up, he realized that Ringo was watching him carefully, with those fucking big mournful eyes that widened slightly when they were caught out before Ringo half-smiled at him and tilted his head. “Come have a go at cards, son.”

George scowled at his cards, John could tell he had a shit hand. “He’s only sayin’ that ‘cause he wins every damn time.”

“Well?” Ringo laughed. “Can’t ‘elp it if ‘m talented, can I?”

“If you were as good at drums…”

“Oi, watch it!” Ringo laid some cards down, distracted from the insult by mounting victory; John wasn’t sure if Ringo really took their insults to heart, ever, had a way of letting them roll off him that John half-envied. George groaned, the game went on and Bob Dylan went on and John just sat there as it passed by.

Suddenly he wanted fiercely to be alone, had been hovering between that and wanting company all afternoon. Wanted to be alone with his miserable old fucking self without George’s tense glances and Ringo’s good intentions and matey concern getting in the way. Alone with Paul’s absence.

John sat still for a second longer before he got slowly to his feet, pen and paper in hand. Ringo looked over at him again, falling out of the middle of a laugh. “No but John, come and have a go, then.”

John half hated half loved Ringo for that, for pressing him when he was down. Had the biggest balls or the biggest heart of anyone he knew, something like that. He cleared his throat. “Nah, I’m just gonna…”

Vague gesture, quick twist of his expression, had started to drift towards the door to his and Paul’s suite.

“He’ll be back soon, Johnny,” Ringo said; there was something John couldn’t quite read in his voice, maybe didn’t want to read. John made a noncommital noise in his throat and edged out of the room, wanting to stride forward and wrench the door open but somehow unable to muster that up.

When he was shut away alone in the room he wasn’t alone, he found. Still had Paul and Bob Dylan filtering through from the other room. He hovered in the doorway indecisively for a tick, unsure if he wanted to pick away at the song at the piano or brood over on his bed or thereabouts. Then he crossed the room and sank down on one of the beds, wasn’t sure which one was his and which one was Paul’s. Knew the one he was sitting on was Paul’s.

Silence without silence; he could hear themurmur of Ringo and George’s conversation in the other room, strains of Bob Dylan rising and falling towards him, the dull thud of his own heart in his ears.

Everything was like that, half one thing and half another. He was like that himself, fucked up and miserably, obstinately hopeful that somehow things would subvert reality and work out the way he wanted. He felt like this every time he let Paul get too close. But that immediately rang phony, even in his own head. He’d never let Paul do anything; Paul was the one who decided how much he was willing to give and John’d take whatever he offered. Because that was the other thing with Paul—nothing was too close for him, he had discovered that too close didn’t exist between them. Rather, it was never close enough. 

But that was just from his side of things. _Paul_ didn’t go to fucking pieces every time things came to a head between them, Paul didn’t turn into a soft fucking queer over him, wasn’t plagued and pulled at by desires, vague and powerful and persistent, for more security and more intimacy and more and more and _more_. For words.

 _If this is love you’ve got to give me more._ 3

John’s throat closed and his eyes burned. Roughly he scrubbed at them, feeling hideously self-conscious, didn’t matter that he was alone where no one could see him; fuck, he couldn’t even see himself. He felt like a fucking woman, as pathetic as all the little girls who burst into tears if Paul so much as smiled at them. Because he was the same as them, wasn’t he? Mooning over Paul while the cunt was off fucking his gorgeous trophy girlfriend.

John took a deep, cleansing breath. When that failed to help he took a long, considering look at the fresh bottle of whiskey on the bedside table that they’d sent Mal out for the other day, some half-assed attempt to experience a bit of America early.

Bob Dylan’s faraway croak slid into focus, if there was music playing John could never really tune it out.

_With haunted hearts through the heat and cold_  
_We never thought we could get very old_  
_We thought we could sit forever in fun_  
_Our chances really was a million to one._ 4

And then Dylan hit the harmonica with a bluesy gusto and John sat there and he gritted his teeth as the feeling welled up within him again. He could taste tears, felt ridiculously close to crying and only the last shred of manful dignity kept him from it. Didn’t keep him from being a sentimental git. He thought of Paul before he was famous. Of him falling about drunk in the Liverpool streets and getting sick in dirty alleyways. Of him in buses and dressing rooms and seedy dark bars and in his little bedroom. Of him curled up under a tattered Union Jack, yammering endlessly about Little Richard and James Dean and Brigitte Bardot’s tits. Of Paul when he was Paul and that was all there was to it.

Of Paul pressed against him, kissing him, in the little bed of a cheap, shitty Paris hotel room just a few miles and a different lifetime away from where he was now.

John reached for the whiskey and threw back a shot of it, straight from the bottle.

_And our choices they were few and the thought never hit_  
_That the one road we traveled would ever shatter and split._ 4

Another shot; he hacked from the burn of it, a lick of fire straight from his mouth into his belly. His eyes slid down to the paper in his hands, the last thing on earth he wanted to fucking do, to examine and analyse such an intensely personal part of himself. He’d avoided it all day, all week, had been going off of just the memory of what he’d written before, the cursory once-over. He felt naked in front of himself, strange and fearful and alienated; his hands shook slightly.

_I should have known better with someone like you_  
_That I would love everything that you do_ 3

And he did, didn’t he? Whenever Paul laughed or smiled or talked or just fucking looked at him, John could feel it. He loved Paul at his very worst, even—when he corrected every fumbled beat or twanged guitar string, when he got bitchy because things didn’t happen the Paul-way, when he got pissed off his ass that one time and flirted with a pregnant Cynthia.

_I never realized what a kiss could be_  
_This could only happen to me_  
_Can’t you see, can’t you see_ 3

John’s lips pressed together in a thin bloodless line, but he read on.

_That when I tell you that I love you,_  
_You’re gonna say you love me too,_  
_And when I ask you to be mine_  
_You’re gonna say you love me too_ 3

A powerful ache rose up through him, intense and interminable and fuck if it didn’t hurt. He couldn’t breathe and his face scorched and his palms grew sweaty and his heart clenched. He felt faint yet horribly aware, felt like covering the words he’d scrawled out, as if someone might read over his shoulder. As if Paul might suddenly traipse back in and wander over to him and take a look, “What’s this you’ve got, then?”

Bloody fucking hell.

He’d known that he’d written it, had felt safe and warm and whatever the fuck else he got like as Paul slept peacefully at his side. Seeing it in his own handwriting, plainly written across the page, though…

 _When I tell you that I love you, you’re gonna say you love me too. And when I ask you to be mine, you’re gonna say you love me too._ 3

It was easier not to think of it when it was just in his head, somehow, when it lurked in the shadows of his mind along with all his other fucked up and insane wishes and thoughts and ideas that couldn’t survive the cold light of day. It was easier to think there weren’t words for it, even imperfect and incomplete words, because words meant reality on some level or other.

He imagined showing the song to Paul, imagined him reading the lyrics and going over the tune and maybe singing along, totally oblivious to what John was trying to say to him. Or maybe he’d read them again and give him that look, inscrutible, bland, Paul’s “I hear you but I won’t let you through” look. John saw himself trying to explain, get him to understand, watched as the scene twisted into a farce; shuddered as a bitter taste seeped into his mouth and he was racked with nauseous waves.

_I should have known better with someone like you._

He took a long drink of the whiskey until his throat was raw with that instead of the feeling choking him.

Fuck, what had he expected? It had been so simple to empty his heart onto the paper and give it a good shake for the little bits still stuck to the bottom, when he’d been so drunk and high and Paul had just come all over his hand and swallowed his down. Only now, alone, removed, thrust back into the real world, did he realize he couldn’t see the ground from where he’d jumped. It was fucking terrifying.

He wished to fucking Christ that he could get drunk out of his mind, that he didn’t have to keep it together for the show in just a few hours.

He read it over again, scanning through quickly and then lingering on a line or two painfully, totally unsure of himself yet knowing that he wouldn’t throw it away. There was no turning back now. He was vaguely aware that Dylan had moved on to another track, maybe three or four after ‘Bob Dylan’s Dream.’ Didn’t matter really, he knew how the song ended, had heard it enough in the past few weeks.

_I wish, I wish, I wish in vain_  
_That we could sit simply in that room again_  
_Ten thousand dollars at the drop of a hat_  
_I’d give it all gladly if our lives could be like that._ 4

“I miss you.”

“It’s only been a couple of weeks, John.”

There was a long pause and John sighed impatiently.

“I miss you, too.” He thought he caught a tired smile in her voice, could vaguely picture her in her housecoat and shadows under her eyes. “You’re almost back, dear.”

John’s mouth twisted at the “dear”; it seemed so…domestic. Married. Cynthia had never called him that when they were dating; he wondered if it bothered her the way it bothered him. “Yeah, just a few show’s left.”

“You know, I’m a bit jealous of you too right now,” Cyn said after a moment’s hesitation, a bit of conversation offered up between them.

“What?”

“Well, you’ve never taken _me_ to Paris, have you?”

“Would have done, you know that,” John said, rankled at the slightest accusation he found in her words, at the idea of being with her in Paris. With anyone but… “You were busy with art school.”

Cynthia hesitated again, painfully. “I was teasing, John. I didn’t…”

“I know,” he cut her off, experiencing a twinge of guilt. He cleared his throat, twisted up the phone cord in his fingers. “I know.”

Something tightly wound eased inside his chest when he heard her relieved breath, knew the smile was timidly returning to her face. “It’s always been Paul,” she said, and John could hear the smile again, “Not me.”

Abruptly the tension clamped down on him again as he was fully reminded again of their first time in Paris. His and Paul’s. Theirs. He sought to get out from under it, to change tack, “But you’ll come for America, yeah?” He listened to Cynthia sigh grainily down the telephone and felt a flash of impatience. He pressed, “How’s that?”

“We’ll see, John.” America wasn’t the same as Paris; America wasn’t romantic and whimsical and beautiful, America was _rock ‘n roll_. More Paul’s thing. Paul. He realized vacantly that Cyn was still speaking, “There’s Jules, and, and…”

“Just leave it,” John muttered, more to himself, grinding the heel of his hand down on cheek.

Cyn faltered. “What?”

“Never mind.” He shook his head wearily and cast about for something to say, half-wishing he hadn’t called in the first place. Settled on it finally. “How _is_ he?” When this was met with a pause, a hideous, awkward sensation swooped through him; he sought to clarify, “Jules.”

“Oh, y’know, he’s been—well, he’s been a _bit_ difficult, but it’s nothing that…” There was static as Cyn switched to her other ear and John felt like he’d never been home (if that was what they called it). “John?”

“Yeah?”

“Would you like me to put him on?”

John squirmed, suddenly cotton-mouthed. “No, that’s—”

“Here, just wait a tick,” Cyn said over him, bizarrely firm beneath all her diffidence, and John hung on to the phone in a kind of anguish, on tenterhooks as Cyn coaxed Jules to the phone. Background noise. He could hear her, tinny and distant, and then his son’s voice, reluctant, petulant, and fuck he couldn’t stand it…

“Julian?” he said tentatively.

“Daddy?” Muffled. There was a pause, and then much louder, “Daddy, is that you?”

MUCH louder. John held the phone away from his ear, grimacing and trying to get himself together. “Yeah, yeah it’s me,” he said, keeping his voice soft and light the way he’d heard Cyn do. “How are ya, Jules?”

“Where are _you_ , daddy?”

John cringed away from the phone, away from that too loud, too high voice; he wished that he knew how to make Jules laugh, get him comfortable, wished, really, that he wanted to know those kinds of things. Was struck with the realization he didn’t know how the fuck to talk to kids. Least of all his own.

“Uh, Paris,” he said, feeling useless because the kid wouldn’t know that from…whatever. “Look, Jules, could you…”

“Is PAUL with you?”

“Uh, yeah, sometimes,” John said, cringing away again, struggling to keep the tone going. Resentment niggled at him, maybe at Julian, maybe at Paul for being fucking _Paul_. “Jules, get your mum back on, would you? Jules…?”

There was a grainy silence and then a burst of chatter between Julian and Cynthia before she got back on finally. “He’s missed you too, John.”

“Yeah, I could tell.”

She might have sighed, but John was distracted when the door swung open and Paul ambled in. He watched him out of the corner of his eye, leaning into the phone more closely.

“’Lo John,” Paul said, cutting himself off and tilting his head at him as he realized he was on the phone. He came to sit down on the bed across from him, observing him idly. John felt a flush of irritation—was just like him, the git, coming in here and whiling away the time when he was in the middle of something else. Waiting ever-so-patiently for him to finish up.

“…John? Who’s that?”

“’s no one, love,” John said, turning his face from Paul’s. “’s just Paul—”

There was an excited shout from Julian on the other end at the sound of Paul’s name; he’d hung around apparently. John’s stomach twisted as his son clambered for “Uncle Paul,” rapturous and eager in a way he hadn’t been til now.

“John, could he—?” Cyn began uncertainly, but he cut her off as his insides dragged down and burned lowly.

“No,” he said, “No, I’ve got to go, anyway—”

“John…”

“Yeah?”

“I love you.”

“I love you too,” he muttered. There was a click as he put the phone back into its cradle and then silence. John stared at the phone for a while, couldn’t bring himself to look at Paul. Then he swung his legs up onto the bed and leaned back against the headboard slowly. He felt drained, oddly empty.

“So how’s Cyn, then?” Paul asked, neatly breaking the silence. John could feel his eyes on him.

“Oh, y’know,” John said bitterly. “Making sure the tea things are spotless.”

He traced Paul’s gaze to exactly his left cheekbone.

“And Jules…?”

“He’s _fine_ , Paul,” John said, laced through with irritation. At Paul, at the situation, at how he’d been feeling lately—“How’s it with Jane?”

It shot out of his mouth before he could stop himself, and he was morbidly glad it did, somehow; his eyes flitted towards Paul, found him sitting, at once prim and lazy. He bit the inside of his lip, hard, as Paul smirked and tapped his chin in mock thoughtfulness, “Ah, good question.”

John felt the sudden urge to strike Paul, just for one blind second, before he felt sick and he had to turn his head away again. He thought maybe he should get a bird, maybe he would after the set tonight, just something to take the edge off, something mindless that wouldn’t tie him down or rip him up.

Knew he wouldn’t.

“John…”

Fuck.

“John, I’ve been thinking…”

The anger that was spitting up inside him, heavy and sarcastic, flared up. “Fancy that, Paul.”

There was a pause, and he thought maybe on an off chance he had cut deep enough that Paul would shut up. He glanced over at him, found instead that he was gazing at him deeply, earnestly, almost pensively; his legs were pressed together and his hands were twisting in his lap. Besides the face, that had always been his most feminine attribute, the way he sat, had made him look ridiculously coy and virginal in the filthy backrooms of Hamburg. Deceptively so.

“George asked me about the album,” Paul said at length.

John sneered. “Thought he’d drop guitar and try for production?”

“No—George _Martin_ , George.” John knew that, and of course Paul knew he knew that. Stupid game they played, someimes. “Stupid dick.”

“Well?” John pressed testily as Paul showed no sign of continuing. “What’d he want?”

Paul examined his fingernails idly, bit at them slightly. “Oh, just asked how it was comin’ along, y’know.”

“Just fab,” John said bitterly. And maybe it was; they had a few songs knocked out, nothing spectacular. Well, maybe “Can’t Buy Me Love”….Unbidden he thought of the song he’d been working on (barely thought of much else, these days). He’d worked out a bit of a tune, hadn’t sung along with it but knew it would work. Harmonica, guitars, no harmony yet. And the unfinished lyric eating away at him.

He had an idea of what he wanted to say, now, had known for a while. Just hadn’t wanted to right it down yet, didn’t know what to think about it.

Paul fidgeted; he was staring at John, vacant and bland and in another world, somewhere off in his own mind where John couldn’t reach him. After a while, he spoke up again, taking John by surprise as his expression cleared and his eyes focused on his again, “Y’know, about the German bit…”

“Yeah,” John said grudgingly, had kind of expected this to come up since the morning.

They had been having tea, the whole lot of them, him and Paul and the other two, along with Mal and Neil, Jane serving as the hostess. If Paul ended up married to her, he’d found a girl who could make the housewife bit sexy, elegant. She made his Cyn seem homey and ordinary in comparison; he’d felt a flash of embarrassment for her as the thought struck him, but in the mood he’d been in, only a fleeting one.

They had been having tea instead of going into the studio and doing the German shit George Martin had saddled them with before “I Wanna Hold Your Hand” hit number one and they all realized that what was good enough for America was bloody good enough for Germany. Well, he and George fucking knew that, at least; Ringo was a neutral and John just knew that Paul still wanted to do it. He hadn’t said anything, but still. It had been a relief to him, away from the tension and the uncertainty and the crazy tedium of it all; a little rebellion to rise above the shitty flatline he’d been in for a while.

It came to something, when teatime was a revolution, a fucking farce that had slid further and further into it. George Martin coming. Beatles diving under tables and apologizing gleefully, not meaning a word of it but forgiven anway. Jane slipping among them, daintily pouring. Kissing Paul, laughing with him, sitting too close and holding hands. John felt half like a snarling husband spying upon his adulterous wife, half a jilted bird, last night’s cold and soggy leftovers. Well, not last night’s, but it came to the same fucking thing.

He had felt like John Lennon, his own fucking twisted and messed up and jealous self.

“Well…can’t ‘urt, can it?” Paul said carefully, looking deep into his eyes and John stared back, unable to help himself.

John made no answer, cleared his throat.

Paul smiled suddenly, beatifically, leaning in to say, “We’ll have something to fall back on, if the whole America thing doesn’t work out.”

John laughed before he knew what he was happening, and Paul joined in, shaky and relieved and suddenly it was just the two of them again, the way it used to be for just an instant. It was like John caught a glimpse sky again after months of rain. Like they had passed under the eye of the hurricane; safe for a few minutes.

“We could just go back to Hamburg, yeah?” he said once their laughter had subsided.

Paul snorted lightly, imagining it like John was. “Y’think the Kaiser’d still have us?”

“Dunno,” John frowned, as if mulling it over. He caught Paul’s eye and went on, “It’s dried up a bit since the glory days, son.”

Paul’s eyes glinted darkly in the lamplight and his mouth was curved into a small smile; John stared at him, fixated.

“We’ve still got it, old boy,” he said firmly, at last, pulled that off in a way John could never do, made him believe it in a way he couldn’t do for himself.

They stared at each other for a long time. The Look. It said everything and nothing and John wanted badly for it to be enough, for it to say enough.

“C’mere,” Paul said quietly, but even as he said it he was getting up himself and crossing the room to lean down over John, one hand pressing into the blanket next to his side. John’s breath caught at the sudden proximity, excruciatingly aware of everything, of Paul; he wasn’t drunk this time, wasn’t off his head. Paul’s breath tickled his face and the moment he saw his eyes flick down to John’s lips his mind went blank, time caught in the pendency of their hesitation.

Then Paul’s lips closed over his, clumsily almost at first as he mouthed John’s bottom lip and their noses bumped, but then Paul reached up to tilt John’s chin and suddenly, tentatively his tongue stroked into his mouth, and then it was hot and frantic and wonderful as John let Paul have his mouth. His eyes closed heavily. Paul let out a little growl, pressing closer as John’s hand slid into his hair; the sound shot down to John’s groin. Warmth suffused him, intense and intricate and strangely delicate, flushing his body with each brush of Paul’s tongue and hint of his teeth.

Slowly, agonizingly, lingeringly Paul pulled away from him, having kissed him breathless. John felt bereft and poignant at the separation, struggled to open his eyes and found Paul gazing at him softly. A long moment elapsed between them.

“For luck,” Paul murmured dumbly, the slightest whisper of a smile on his face before he pulled away entirely.

They sat in silence together for a long time and John absorbed the quiet companionship along with his quiet despair.

He was ready to finish the song now, had finally come to terms with it—as much as he ever could—and it was fucking killing him.

_So I should have realized a lot of things before_  
_If this is love you’ve got to give me more_  
_Give me more, give me more_  
_I never realized what a kiss could be_  
_This could only happen to me_  
_Can’t you see, can’t you see_  
_That when I tell you that I love you,_  
_You’re gonna say you love me too_  
_And when I ask you to be mine_  
_You’re gonna say you love me too_  
_You love me too, you love me too_  
_You love me too_ 3


End file.
